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IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE A RIGHT; 


AND THE 


INFAMY OF THE REVOLUTION AGAINST IT 


IN THE PROPOSED 


AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION 




BY REV. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D.D. 

'/ 




NEW YORK: 
ROBERT J. JOHNSTON, PRINTER, 

33 BEEKMAN STREET. 













PREFACE. 








/> 

T> 



The fol’owing pages are, for the most part, notes of discourses on the obli¬ 
gations of equity and justice to the colored race of this country, according to * 

the Constitution and the Word of God. They are presented as a protest 
against the Amendment of the Constitution proposed by Congress to the Leg¬ 
islatures of the States, for the purpose of conciliating the rebels, by giving 
them the right of disfranchising the loyal blacks on account of the color of the 
skin. The right of suffrage in the Constitution, as it now stands, is a right of 
all free persons, irrespective of color. It is proposed, in order that the rebels 
may be empowered to disfranchise the blacks, to give to all the States the 
freedom of taking away the right to vote from such classes of the people as 
the States may choose. This proposed amendment we repel, as being con¬ 
trary to the Constitution, a violation of justice and of God’s Word, and a revo 
lution against the rights of the people as guaranteed in their republican form 
of government which the Amendment would change into an oligarchy. 

































































































































6 


for themselves, shall make thtir own selection And selection can only be 
made by choice, and for choice there must be the expression of the choice, 
and that is suffrage, and it must be suffrage of the people, or it is not the 
people’s appointment. So that, take whatever ground you will, it is still evi¬ 
dent that suffrage is from God, the right of suffrage is a right from God, 
and unless God himself by a divine revelation indicates whom the people 
shall choose they are under divine obligation to exercise for themselvts 
what is a divinely conferred right and a divinely app^ in'ed duty, the right 
of suffrage. 

THE DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF THE PRESENT DAY. 

But the argument of these modtrn democrats who deny the right of suf¬ 
frage to the people, is that God made Saul and David kings over Israel and 
therefore the right of suffrage does not belong to the people of the United 
States as a right from God. A wide step of democratic logic, indicating a 
greater faith in and submission unto the Old Testament as a divine revelation 
of equal authority in government now as among the Jews, than we had sup¬ 
posed existed among that class of politicians. This goes far towards genu¬ 
ine Christian radicalism. It would certainly be a sign of the millenium were 
it not that it is packed for a purpose just as suffrages themselves are bought 
and sold as of supreme authority, by those very persons who deny the divine 
righ r of suffrage as a right of man. It is a light of wealth, a right of pur¬ 
chase. a right of despotism, a right of party corruption and rule, but not a 
right of manhood, intelligence, justice, man. 

Because God made Saul and David kings over Israel, therefore no person in 
the United States has any right from God to vote. Equally clear it is that 
because God made David king, therefore we have no i ight to any but a 
kingly government; and it is evident that this party regard a monarchy as 
the only divinely appointed form, and of course a republic is a violation or 
God’s authority, and an intrusion upon it, just as the claim of suffrage for 
the people is such a violation. For if suffrage is not a right from God, be¬ 
cause a king was appointed of God for the Israelites, then a republic, which is 
the creation of suffrage, is not a right from God, but a monarchy is. To this 
practical result the denial of the divine and natural right of suffrage travels ; 
and this, pei haps, is the secret purpose of the democratic denial of right to 
prepare the way for a coup d'etat, changing the republic into an absolute mon¬ 
archy. A more adroit pontoon, a better bridge all ready to be thrown across 
tbe gulf between freedom and despotism, could not be conceived, than this 
democratic denial of the right of suffrage as inferior to the right of kingcraft, 
of absolutism—a contrivance by which the people may be drawn across the 
Rubicon, and transferred from the freedom of a republic to the despotism of 
an absolute monarchy, in the hands of conspirators against suffrage, almost 
before they know it. The people lay down one night in France republicans 
and freemen and woke the next morning monarchists and slaves, by a con¬ 
trivance less adroit, less permanent, less subtle and far-reaching than this. 
The denial of the right of suffrage from God as being a blasphemy, and the 
appeal to the divine right of kings as established in ihe Bible, is a phenom¬ 
enon of democracy which tbe people cannol; fail to ponder. 

It does not lessen the significance nor the danger of such a phenomenon 
that it is pure ignorance and a perversion of Scripture. But it is well to 



THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE FROM GOD. 


FREEDOM AND SUFFRAGE IS TUB CONSTITUTION. 

The Declaration cf independence coincides with the earliest injunctions and 
guarantees ot revealed religion. Justice is the foundation of government; 
justice is the right and obligation of all mankind. And all the people shall 
say — Amen! When that was uttered.it did not mean all the white peo¬ 
ple or all exc-pt the colored race, any more than in our own constitution 
all the people means only the white people. There was equality before 
the law, and just law without respect to persons. The rights of all persona 
in the land were represented and protected. 

UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN THE EARLIEST DAYS. 

The earliest account is in the first chapter of Deuteronomy, veise 13: 
“Take you wise men, and understanding and known among your tribes, 
and I will make them rulers over you Choose them for yourselves accord¬ 
ing to your kno vledt'O of them. Judge righteously between every man and 
his brother and the stranger that is with him.”. The stranger is placed on a 
footing of equality with all the people as to all the people’s rights. “ And the 
stranger that is within thy gates.” The wrath of the just God is laid defi¬ 
nitely upon those who turn away the stranger from hi- right. The stranger is 
such an one as the negro in our country. “Ye shall not respect persons in 
judgment, but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be 
afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God’s.” So likewise (Deut. 
xvi., 18-20):—“Judge* and officers shalt thou make thee,” etc. The choice 
and making of their officers was with the people : and there is no conceivable 
mode of choice but by expression of th ir judgment and will, and that is suf¬ 
frage. • 

Besides all this, there was provision made for the change of government 
by the cli ice of the peop’e, if they should be so foolish as to change from 
the republic to the monarchy, Deut. xvii., 14:—“ When thou art come unto 
the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it and shalt 
dwell therein, and shalt say, ‘I will set a king over me, I ke as all the nations 
that are round about me.’ thou shalt in any wise set Mm king over thee 
whom the Lord tliy God shad choose” The expression and sovereignty of 
the popular will are admitted in the change of the form of government; 
and as to the personal selection of the king, if God had not expressly ordered 
that they should receive that from Him by Divine choice and appointment, 
that also must have been by suffrage—the express on of the popular will. 
And so with us. Having no app intment of our chief magistrate from God, 
it is God’s arrangement that the appointment of the ruler be by the suffrage, 
by the choice, of the people. This right and obligation of suffrage therefore, 
is as manifestly from God as the right and duty ©f having a king if God ap¬ 
pointed him, and of estab ishing whom God appoints. When God does not 
appoint, then it is equally God’s arrangement thst the people shall appoint 



*1 


note that there is no such thing in the word of God as the kingly form of gov¬ 
ernment by Divine choice and right, but by popular suffrage or personal am¬ 
bition and violence. The people in their folly demanded a king, that they 
might have the grandeur and absoluteness and imperialism of the idolatrous 
despotisms round about them. They had grown weary of the simplicity, and 
freedom, and independence of living with God only for their king, and de¬ 
manded that the government should be changed from this republican the¬ 
ocracy into the monarchical style and substance. And God informed them 
that the kingly government was in essence a usurpation and would prove 
the substitution of despotism instead of freedom, for that their king would 
ru e by his own will, and proclamations, and authority, and would serve 
them, and do with them, in epite of all their good laws from God, just as 
he pleased. Nevertheless, notwithstanding this reproof and remonstrance, they 
insisted on their demand, and God ordered his servant Samuel to yield to 
this expression of their will and give them a king, according to their choice. 
So far, then, from the establishment of the kiDgly form of government being 
a denial of the right of suffrage, it was the result of the exercise ot that 
right, though in a wrong way. It was the popular demand, the expression 
of the will of the Hebrew people, which God so far recognized, even when 
this particular exercise of it was an offensive rejection of His own kingship, 
as to give it way, and appoint a king in answer to it. He would let them try 
this experiment, and they did try it, and perished in consequence of it. For it 
was their kings—a succession of wicked kings and despots denying the right 
of suffrage, and herein making common cause with the modern Confederate 
rebel democracy, and compelling the people to obey iniquitous and unconsti¬ 
tutional decrees, and to receive as State institutions, oppression, caste, class 
despotisms, idolatries and forms of slavery, and to obey the statutes of the 
house and administration of Ahab, and to walk in the counsels of Omri in¬ 
stead of the laws of Jehovah ; it was their kings, and their kingly govern¬ 
ment in the hands of oligarchies of State villains and God denjing priests and 
prophets, that destroyed them. The God-given right of suffrage would have 
saved them had they continued to exercise it according to the law of God. 
They were destroyed because, in fact, they gave up their right of suffrage, 
which connected themselves’ directly by conscience with the will of God, 
and made them supreme and unconquerable in His righteousness, and substi¬ 
tuted in its place the claims of an impious State sovereignty, which they said 
they were bound to obey as the higher law. That was their ruin—the renun¬ 
ciation of the gifts of freedom and independence bestowed upon them from 
God, the highest of which was the right of suffrage in accordance with the 
law of God and for the purpose of allegiance to him, and instead thereof the 
choice of human kings and oligarchs and their statutes of State expediency. 

Just bo our State sovereignty is the despotism of Ahab and Omris, 
and the renunciation of our right ot suffrage into their hands, to be 
disposed of by them, and overridden aod taken from the people at their 
oligarchical pleasure. The denial of the right of projecting the right of 
suffrage for all the people is a fraudulent assignment of power over into the 
hands of a special partner in the fraud. The States are the special partner, 
withholding the right of suffrage from such millions of the people as they 
please, though citizens of the United States government and entitled to reore- 


8 


entation by suffrage. The General government refuses protection, affirming 
that it is the prerogative of State sovereignty to exclude lrom suffrage whom¬ 
soever it chooses. The General government thus creates the State sover¬ 
eignty supreme over itself, and commits to the States as a sovereign right 
of injustice and of despotism its own power of protection and of justice. It 
renounces the right of interference in behalf of its own citizens, although 
their freedom be taken away and a serfdom established in its stead, which 
is so destructive of the rights of human nature that our fathers called it 
slavery, and rose in armed rebellion rather than endure it. At the very 
same time the democracy which thus denies the right of representation for 
our own citizens, and forbids the government from interfering to protect 
them, calls upon the same government to interfere with armed force for 
the protection of foreigners, and even of Americans caught in the act of 
attempting the overthrow of a friendly government. Our government can 
interfere to protect persons not yet naturalized from the oppression of a 
foreign power ; but it cannot interfere to protect the freedom of its own 
native citizens from whom it claims allegiance, when that freedom is taken 
away-and sovereign States trample them down by millions into the slavery 
of caste. This is such shemelul abnegation of the power, and denial of the 
purpose, for which God has appointed governments on earth, it is fraud and 
hypocrisy so impious towards God, and so cruel, oppressive and demoralizing 
towards men, it is such a scheme for evading responsibility and obligation to 
God and justice, and setting up as the tie and necessity of the Srate the will 
and pleasure and class interests of a set of rebels and tyrants, announcing 
and teaching such statesmanship as of religious obligation and authority 
that it is evidently essential to ilie advancement of God's kingdom upon earth 
that it be destroyed. It is as essential now as it was three thousand years 
ago. 

RIGHT OF REVOLUTION AND SUFFRAGE FROM GOD 

Accord ng to the»e men the right of revolution against a bad government is 
from God. but the right of choosing and establishing a good government is 
not from God. The maxim that resistance to tyrants is obedience to God is 
true religion. Resistance to tyrants is a God-given right and duty. This doc^ 
trine is orthodox and religious ; but the assertion of the right of choice as to 
the nature of your government and the character of your rulers—the as ertion 
of the right cf suffrage as a light from God is profane to the verge of blas¬ 
phemy. Now, if the obligation of supporting government for ihe sake of 
justice is from God, how can it be otherwise than that the right of choosing 
such a government and choosing to support it is from God? But the 
right of choosing and sustaining it is the right of voting for it, the right of 
representation in it for the purpose and from the necessity of sustai fr g it. 
The right of suffrage for it is certaimy as natural and divine as the light of 
resistance against it when it becomes subversive and destructive both of 
God's government and man’s in'erests and welfare. The rght of suffrage is 
equivalent to the right and duty of obedience Certainly the right and duty 
of sustaining a good thing by suffrage is as natural as the right of re.-isting 
a bad thing by violence. The right of suffrage is as natural as the right of 
self defence. The right of suffrage is the right of self-defence by moral means, 
by peaceful means, by means which will forever prevent; and preclude the 







necessity of resorting to violence. The right of suffrage, therefore, is pro- 
tounder, deeper, more original, comprehensive and unalloyed than any right 
of physical defence by power can be. It is not till the right of suffrage—the 
moral right—be tried, or reject'd and destroyed, that the right of self-de- 
fenoe, and of vindicating justice by violence, by revolution, takes place 

LAW OF THE CONSTITUTION. 

As of old, the robbery of an oppressed race is against the constitution 
as well as against God. The constitution delares that the people of the State 
shall elect representatives. The rebel democracy affirms that not the people 
of the State, but only a ruling class shall elect representatives. By universal 
laws of interpretation the constitution cannot be interpreted as requiring or 
sanctioning an inj ustice or a wrong ; and if such a thing were possible it must 
be expressed in the clearest manner. If there could be such a thing as the 
con>titution permitting any of the citizens to be excommunicated, as not being 
a part of the people, it must appoint the class with the most definite and unmis¬ 
takable precision. Now when the constitution says that the House of Repre¬ 
sentatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the 
people of the several States, it does not say that people with a colored skin 
are not the people. And if any State undertakes to disfranchise and excom¬ 
municate that portion of the people, it violates the constitution. Under the 
plea of appointing qualification for electors, the State might exclude all white 
persons of German and Irish origin. Suppose that this were done in South 
Carolina. Would the democracy regard this as constitutional? Would this 
bo permitted under the plea of'State sovereignty ? Would the United States 
government permit a State to denaturalizi and disfranchise Irish aod German 
citizens on ihe plea that the constitution provides that ‘ the electors in each 
State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous 
branch of the State Legislature Suppose that there were half as many 
emigrants from Germany and Ireland in South Carolina »s there are colored 
American citizens, and that the State should determine that among the 
qualifications of electors for its House of Representatives there should he 
the condition of not being either cf Irish or German extraction, would that 
be permitted for* a moment on ihe pretence of its beirg constitutional, a 
right of State sovereignty ? Would any State, be permitted to wring out 
of the provision in the eonstitut on. giving to the electors of United States 
re presen'atm s the same qualifications «s of State representatives, the au hor" 
ity and x*ight to disfranchise a million of Irishmen and Germans ? • No more 
can it be permitted to wring < lit of the same provision the right to disfranchise 
a million of Americm citizens on account of the color of the skin. It would 
be to change that artic e of the constitution from a declaration cf rights 
into a bill ol at ainder. It w uld be authorizing the State to pass a bill of 
attainder, and making that bill of supreme authority over the United States 
government, compelling the United States to sustain the attainder of the 
State against the citizens of their own government. The application of that 
clause to the disfranchisment of millions by the color of the skin makes a 
bill of attainder without crime It has been argued by the democracy in 
Congress that the proposition to keep out the iebels for only four years 
from the right of United States suffrage on account of their treason is an 


10 


attainder forbidden by the constitution. But the same defenders of the 
rights of rebels argue the attainder of millions of loyal citizens on account 
of color as a rght of Stats sovereignty. For the United States to keep the 
rebels out of suffrage for four years is a crime of attainder. For a sovereign 
State to debar loyal citizens from suffrage forever is a right of attainder, 
belonging to its sovereignty. Attainder of white rebels for four years by 
the United States government on account of treason is a came. Attainder 
of innocent and loyal colored persons for life by the State on account of color 
is a sovereign right, with which the United States cannot interfere. This 
surrender ol United States justice and right of protection to Sta'e injusice, 
for the sake of a compromise with rebels, for the sacrifice of the colored race, 
is the most demoralizing confusion and amalgamation of right and wrong, 
with wrong as the supreme authority and expediency, that can be imagined. 
It is an act of political sodomy. 

A FRAUDULENT ASSIGNMENT. 

What can fitly illustrate this treachery snd hypocrisy? When you are 
required to do justice to the blacks, you have not the power ; you have 
conveyed it away to the power of State sovereignty. But for the purpose 
of restoring the rebels, you can order the State at your pleasure. It is a 
fraudulent assignment for robbing a third party. Suppose a man sold, or 
pretended to sell to you the patent right of an invention, and in his descrip¬ 
tion of what he conveys he mentions everything save only a valve, or spring, 
or pulley, or ingredient, on which the whole command and benefit of the 
patent depends, but that he has reserved to himself. Confiding in your 
right you proceed to build a factory, but find that the rrticle is worthless, 
and that all your rights in it are unavailing for want of the element or article 
withheld. But the cunning rascal that has outwitted you tells you that 
you have got all that he ever intended you should have. Y u have got the 
lock, but the key is his own. He sold you the right of a lock, but he did 
not mention the key. It is not in the bond. Be sold you a pound of flesh, 
but not a drop of blood. You may have all the civil rights secured by his 
contract with y^u, but the thing withheld is political and belongs to his part¬ 
ner, and is not his to give. Just so with the arrangement between our gov¬ 
ernment and the ) ebel States. Our government is fraudulently assigning 
ever its property or protec ion, its patent right of justice, in o the possession 
of State sovereignties. Ourgovernment defrauds those whom it ought to pro¬ 
tect by the averment that suffrage is political, and therefore does not belong 
to the colored race. The crime is bad enough as bare injustice ; but the trick, 
the fraud, makes it still worse. The iniquity is barefaced. It h just as w hen 
the old Jews, after their crimes of impiety, wiped their mou'hs and pre¬ 
sented themselves before God m the temple, saying, We were delivered to 
do tbese abominations. 

THE PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION. 

The present proposed amendment to the constitution, leaving the rebel States 
at liberty to disfranchise the colored race, is at sword’s points with the just 
amendment which forbade slavery. And it was added that Congress shall 
have power to enact and execute such laws as are necessary to secure their 
freedom. On this ground we have passed the Civil Rights bill. But if 


11 


that bill was necessary for security from slavery ; if what are called civil 
rights were necessary to be secured by special law in order that the constitu¬ 
tional amendment against slavery might be carried out, much more was it 
necessary, for the same purpose, that the right of suffrage be secured by 
special law. It is not imagined that for white men there is any security 
against slavery but in possession of the right of suffrage. No more is there 
for black men—nor so much. But instead of adding that security you have 
deliberately taken it away, and forbidden it from being added. Instead 
of securing to the blacks for their protection the same rights of suffrage 
that the whites have, we have actually proposed a second amendment 
securing to rebel sovereign States the right to take away that right from the 
blacks, leaving them at the mercy of the whites, and more absolutely at 
their mercy than if they had been expressly counted in a material for white 
representation. This amendment is a provision for evading and nullifying the 
first. It is as if Gen. Grant, having got the rebel army at a river in the neces¬ 
sity of surrender, should have sent his own soldiers to throw a bridge of 
pontoons by night for their escape the next morniog. The amendment for¬ 
bidding slavery is pontooned—is bridged for the rebels—by the amendment 
giving them the power to take away suffrage. We have amended the 
constitution against slavery, and now further amend it in behalf of the rebels, 
giving to them the right to put back the negroes into slavery. For we judge 
the Congress and ourselves who do this deed by our own estimate in regard 
to whites. Merely the deprivirg white men of suffrage lor four years is a 
punishment. A life disfranchisement is a felon’s treatment. It makes white 
men slaves. Our fathers said that it did, and acted out that saying with the 
bullet and the bayonet. Virginia said that it did. The slave States in their 
bills of rights said that the taking away of the right of suffrage made them 
slaves. And now we propose by amendment of the constitution to confer 
upon those States the sovereign right and power to make such slaves of all 
the colored race. We propose to make that slavery constitutional and per¬ 
petual for black men which would justify an armed revolution for the whites. 
The act of conferring on the States the right of disfranchisement also nullifies, 
practically, the provisions of the Civil Rights’ bill, putting it out of the power 
of the colored citizens themselves to protect themselves in those rights. The 
white race would regard themselves as unprotected and insecure if they had 
not the right of suffrage wherewith to secure their own inalienable rights 
of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Civil rights are insecure for 
whites without political power to secure them. Where is the white com¬ 
munity that would permit the Congress or any State in the Union to deprive 
them of the right to vote on the pretence that that right was political, and 
that no rights could be allowed to the people but civil rights? Who shall 
have the authority to define them, or to take them away under pretence 
of their being political? But where began the doctrine that political rights 
belong to the government, not to the people ? 

THE COMPBOMISE BILL 

Next, the Compromise bill. The country have danced about their idol, the 
negro prejudice, and the white man’s government, even at the loot of Sinai, 
and while the thunders of God’s wrath against slavery were still reverberating. 
They have compromised with the sacrifice of justice, and out of all their offer- 


12 


ings there has come forth this calf And this is offered to the people as the 
method of reconstruction. Everything but justice. Auything offered to the 
country but justice. Justice without respect to persons is God’s demand. 
Justice for the whites, but not the blacks, is our answer. Justice with 
respect of persons. Justice founded on and governed by respect to per¬ 
sons, and respect in the lowest, most degrading and insulting form ; most 
impious towards God, most scornful and oppressive towards man; respect 
of persons by the race and the color of the skin. A violation of the Divine 
law, a perversion of justice, the administration of cruelty and outrage instead, 
not on a passing generation merely, but, as in ihe case of slavery itself, on 
posterity. Color determined by race and race by color, and millions con¬ 
secrated to insult and injustice, by means of that stigma, from parents to 
children, generation alter generation. And you can imagine, in the intoxica¬ 
tion of your white war dance around this golden calf of compromise, that 
Sinai’s God will let you dance on in posterity. They say, “ How doth God 
know?” This is sovereignty. We have made a political contract that the 
States shall have supreme control of suffrage, and who is the Almighty that 
he should interfere with State sovereignty? We know not the Almighty, 
neither will we let the colored race have the benefit of the white man’s gov¬ 
ernment. 

ESSENCE OF A JUST REPUBLICANISM. 

The one superiority of »he form of government adopted by our fathers above 
that of Great Britain was in the universality of representation, a government 
based on the right of suffrage as belonging to all the people, and not merely to 
a ruling c a98. That is republicanism, the right of manhood, of free agency, 
of personal conscience and accountability, the correlative of allegiance, the 
safeguard of allegiance from going into despotism. It is the central law, the 
discovery of which and constructs n of governments accordingly is as the 
discovery of the law of gravitation and the adaptation of our philosophy and 
practice accordingly ; as the discovery of the circulation of the blood, aDd 
the correspondent certainty and progress in the art ol medicine. An intuitive* 
inevitable urgency and effort of the human mind towa’ds this law, towards 
the obedience ot society under i r , and there never can be peace till this har¬ 
mony be attained, till men’s artificial political arrangements are brought 
into submissive correspondence wiih th’s demand and necessity of human 
nature under the controlling necessity of government as ordained of God. 
The throes of empires, revolutions, anarchies, desolations, destructions, are 
the efforts of humanity in its blindness struggling towards the realizition of 
this undiscovered law, the acknowledgment and enthronement of this primal 
right of man. How simple and how plain is ever} thing, aDd how easily 
worked is all the machinery of government when that law is acknowledged 
and obeyed, when every class and every individual possesses in that right and 
in the fundamental law securing it a power of self-protection and defence; a 
right that, when universal, makes the interests of all the interests of each, 
and the inviolate secured rights of each the interest and common bond and 
compulsion of all. 

OBJECTED AS AN OUTRAGE. 

It is said to be an outrage to force suffrage upon the people. Are your 
rights or my rights forced upon the people of this State because the law 


compels you to respect them as your own? Because I am permitted as well 
a-! ou to hold property, and 5 ou cannot steal it from me wi'hout the penalty of 
the law for that crime, is that the forcing of the right of property on the 
State or on the people? Colored persors are permit'ed to hold property, 
and the laws protect them in it. Is that a forcing of the right of property 
on the people of the State? When colored persons are permitted bylaw 
to vote in this State on a freehold consideration, is that a forcing of suffrage 
on the people ? Because black laborers receive wages for their labor, is that 
a forcing of the right of wages on the people? Because other persons are 
not prohibited by law from the right of buying a house and holding it in fee 
simple as well as yourself, is that a forcing of the right of purchase upon 
you or other householders, or on the people of the State? Is thine eye evil 
because I am good? Because other eUsses as well as your own enjoy the 
privileges of life and the protection of the constitution, are those piivileges 
therefore to be regarded as the exercise of despotism forced upon the State? 
Because your neighbors are permitted to erj >y the same liberty of speech and 
opinion, of eating and drinking and believing and domestic arrangements that 
you enjoy, is that the forcing of the rights and privileges of freedom upon you? 
Yet we have heaid the proposition of suffrage as a possession of the colored 
race, described by Christian men, yea, ministers, as being the unjust and op¬ 
pressive enforcement of suffrage on the people of the State, the cramming of 
suffrage down their throats. Because you are prevented from stealing from 
your neighbor that is the cramming of honesty down ycur throat. Men speak 
of thrusting or forcing negro suffrage upon an unwilling State as if it were 
some despotic, tyrannic violence put upon them. But who is forced ? Whose 
rights are meddled with? The Roman Catholics might as well complain 
of violence and force because Piotestants are protected in the right to vote 
Protestants might as well say that Roman Catholic suffrage is a thing forced 
upon the Scat.?, crammed down men’s throats. Whose throats are seized ? On 
whom is any violence committed? The trouble is that one class is not per¬ 
mitted to lord it over another class. Suppose that the burglars in a commu¬ 
nity should denounce a law giving to barkers and householders the right to 
protect thiir own property and families against robbery, as being a violent 
aggression on the burglars’ rights, a violence thrust upon them, a violation 
of their liberties. The trouble is that rogues are not \ ermitted freely to op¬ 
pose honest men by violence. .there aie persons so strenuous for free trade* 
that they extend it to free trade in other people’s rights ; and they hate pro¬ 
tection to such a degree, that they declaim against the protection of black 
people from robbery and slavery as a despotism. If the government proposes 
to give over a million of its subjects into the power and will of ano her mil¬ 
lion, to be beaten by them and deprived of every liberty, that is all right— 
that is free trade, which the government is bound to protect. But if the gov. 
eminent proposes to protect a million of its subjects from bemg beaten and 
robbed by another million, that is a despotism. 

OBJECTED THAT PROTECTION IS DESPOTISM. 

A government with the power and purpose of a personal protection, is, 
in ihe view of these men, a consolidated despotism. But a government 
bound and pledged to protect and guarantee each State in the right of 
oppressirg and trampling down the colored race if the ruling class please, is 


14 


a free democracy. Propose a law defending and protecting the oppressed 
class, and bestowing the same right of protection on all, with a bureau for 
its execution, and instantly that is denounced as despotic, and it is pretended 
that it confers too much power on the President to make him the executive of 
such a law. If he vetoes it for the sake of keeping down the black race 
and bringing back the rebels into power, he is held as the savior of his coup. 
try. The veto clothes him with the power of oppression but takes from him 
the power of protection, and that is th6 essence of the slaveholding democra. 
cy. Such a President can, by proclamation, take away the right of suffrage 
from millions ; but there is no dangerous power in that—no approach to des¬ 
potism in that. That is all right, because it is against personal liberty 
only of the blacks, and it protects the liberty of the whites to oppress them. 
But pass a law making it the duty of the President to protect them, and giving 
him the power to do this, and that is despotism. Let the President veto that 
and instantly the press and the pulpit shout halleluia. The government may 
protect the State in the privilege of class representation and of oppression, 
and so far is a democratic free government; but the instant it undertakes to 
protect the individual from such oppression, as a citizen shielded by the con 
stitution, that instant it is despotic. The free traders go in for protection of 
State rights as the grand business of the General government; but the protec¬ 
tion of individuals and of personal rights, so that no State can trample upon 
them or sell a monopoly of them to a class they abhor. We witness a party 
defending for States fresh from rebellion the liberty to take away others’ 
rights as the most sacred heritage of republican freedom. Any law passed 
forbidding that outrage they denounce, because the rebels themselves are not 
represented, and it is contrary to republican freedom to enact laws which 
the persons concerned have not themselves had a voice in passing. The 
colored race have no representation ; yet it is no violation of republicanism 
to deprive them of their rights without any voice of their own in the mat¬ 
ter. But to deprive the rebels of the right to rob the colored race by law is a 
wicked despotism, because the rebels themselves are not represented. 
Thieves and murderers not being represented in the General Assembly, it is 
a despotism if that legislative body presume to pass a law restraining the right 
of theft and murder, or forbidding theft and murder as public crimes. But 
millions of loyal citizens, innocent of any crime, may be punished as if they 
were felons, because, being black, they have no rights that white men are 
bound to respect. 

THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL 

The President, the Congress, the administration, the government, the peo¬ 
ple, are acting on the principle that black men have no rights that white men 
. are bound to respect. All their legislation, all their measures in regard to the 
colored race are on that basis. It is not admitted that the colored race have 
any rights which they themselves are entitled to, irrespective of the gift or 
allowance of the government, or which they themselves are entitled to protect 
for themselves by self-protection and defence. Whatever rights the colored 
race receive they receive and hold at the mere will of the white race, as the 
grant of the white race, to be withheld or bestowed at their pleasure, through 
the working of a government which is solely the government of white men, 
and by their own legislation secured as solely theirs, against the possibility of 


15 


black men having any part in it. The Civil Rights bill itself is on this basis. 
It i < passed on the assumption that the negroes have no other claim to what are 
called civil rights than white men give them in and by such a bill. It is 
framed on the assumption that the colored race are wholly in the power of 
the white race, as not a portion of the independent, self-governing citizens of 
the country, but dependent on the bounty of the white citizens for whatever 
place and protection in society may be accorded them. Ic is passed on the 
assumption that whereas the white race have the right and the power to 
make their own laws for themselves and for all others, and for this purpose 
the inalienable right of representation by vote, the black race have no such 
right nor power, and even for their civil rights are dependent on what the 
white race may please to throw them from the great white table, as a mas¬ 
ter throws a bone to his dog. It is not meet to take the children’s bread and 
cast it to the dogs. The vote is the children’s bread ; not one of these dogs 
shall have it. They shall only have the crumbs that fall from their mas¬ 
ter’s table. The inhumanity and bigotry of Jews that crucified the Saviour 
of the world rather than admit Gentile dogs to a participation in their own 
rights, which Christ came to put at the disposal of all. is renewed in this re¬ 
publican cruelty, this trampling and torture of the black race into a caste for 
perpetual crucifixion by the color of their skin. You may judge the Civil 
Rights bill by transposing the tables, and supposing it issued as a grant of pro¬ 
tection to the whites. What whi e man would not feel insulted and oppressed 
if informed that all the rights that he possesses under this government are in 
that bill conferred by that bill, existing only because that bill has been passed 
as a boon by the government to its white subjects? What white man would 
bear to be told that the government cannot and will not give him the right of 
voting because he is white ; that the right of representation does not be- 
long to him, but that he must be thankful to receive as a grant the civil 
rights which are enumerated in the bill? What white community would 
endure the doctrine that all the rights which are not granted and guaranteed 
in that*bill are taken from them and reserved as the property of govern¬ 
ment, to be withheld at pleasure ? What white community will endure to be 
told that the State can at its pleasure take away their rights as citizens of the 
United States, destroy their representation, and the possibility of representa¬ 
tion, in the government of their country, by local laws against their race, their 
parentage, their stature, or their girth about their waist? 

A SCENE IN BALTIMORE. 

We recently saw the record of a scene in the cars in Baltimore, a colored 
woman entering and none forbidding, none looking offended, or surprised, or 
indignant; on the contrary, men and women inviting her to a seat beside them, 
moving to make convenient room for her. What was the secret of this won¬ 
drous courtesy ? She had a white babe in her arms ; that was the talisman 
Her courteous reception was the testimony of the supremacy of the white 
race. As a servant in the family of freedom, and in homage to the white 
babe—for the sake of the white babe ; illustrating the advice of President 
Lincoln, that suffrage might be given to a few, inasmuch as they might help 
to preserve the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom. Though not of the 
family, they might be admitted into it for the sake of de ending the privileges 


16 


and rights of its aristocracy as the reigning family of freedom. For the sake 
of keeping ihe fee simple in possession of the family they might be admitted 
as tenants at will. 

No admission of any right of suffrage in them ; the white race alone are 
presumed to possess the right, aod theirs alone is the right of conferring the 
right, if they please, on any ot the black?, or of withholding it altogether. 
And, even now, if it is asked, it is asked for the sake of the white nation ; 
pure, selfish expediency. 


THK OBLIGATIONS OI<’ STATESMANSHIP. 

We demand it in (he name of God and justice. Statesmanship is not of 
mere expediency, but is a province of religious obligation and wisdom, attach¬ 
ing us directly to the will of God. The object ot government as ordained of 
God is the protection of the innocent and the security of their rights; and 
the punishment of the wicked here is expedient for the sake of the justice 
of preserving and protecting the rights accorded of God to them that do well, 
and the freedom of well doing and conscience to God. The Civil Eights bill is 
a bill sanctioning the exclusion of the colored race from the right of re. 
presentation, the right of self-protection by suffrage, and throwing them help¬ 
less on the government for those rights which the white race need no laws to 
grant or protect, holding them irrespective of the government. The Civil 
Rights bill announces that those rights which the white race hold inaliena¬ 
ble by virtue of citizenship and representation, the colored race can hold only 
by special permission of the white men’s government. In other words, the 
Civil Rights bill, leaving out the right of suffrage, and taken in connection 
with Colorado, is a product of the Dred Scott decision ; J say, taken in con¬ 
nection with simultaneous legislation of Congress admitting Colorado with the 
word “ white,” excluding the colored race from representative citizenship, 
thus positively legislating against them in this particular, and so assuming 
the right to have legislated in their favor had it pleased. Assuming the entire 
sovereignty over the subject, and having the opportunity offered, unquestion¬ 
able, absolute, of giving the right to vote to the colored inhabitants, the white 
representatives have deliberately taken it from them, have voted away the 
right to vote in an unrepresented class. By exercise of a power which they 
receive only from the votes of the people they vote away from a portion of 
the people that right and power of voting to which they owe all their own le¬ 
gitimate authority to vote at all. And this public robbery they exercise on 
the ground of the color of the skin, as qualifying and designating a portion 
of the people to be thus disfranchised and robbed by the people’s representa¬ 
tives. They are legislative thieves. But worse than that, the theft being 
of that which constitutes the vita\ essence of republican freedom, they are 
moral assassins. They stab the life of political manhood, which in this coun¬ 
try is a part of the moral life of every citizen. They do this for posterity. 
In England John Stuart Mill has recently distinguished himself by appealing 
to the sense of justice and glory ; the life of national glory among empires on 
earth and statesmen who have elevated them ; in behalf of suffrage for the peo¬ 
ple of England, as an obligation to posterity, for that every government and 


n 


age, and Christian people are bound to live for posterity, and if they do not, 
they degrade and deny their own immortality and manhood. 

CUR REPUBLICAN LEGISLATION. 

But here in this country, we have a nation, government aDd administration, 
whose statesmanship is to degrade posterity, whose highest legislative work 
in the reconstruction of foundations of many generations, is providing for 
the perpetual degradation and moral assassination of many millions ; states¬ 
men who teach the infamy of legislation on the ground of the color of the 
skin, and transmit to their posterity that record and example of their own 
infamy. And the ingratitude and execrableness of this madness is accepted 
by multitudes in the church, and men in high pl*ce and influence as Chris- 
tiau teachers, do not besita e to denounce the efforts of leading friends of 
justice to the colored race, as proving them devoid of true statesmanship, 
because, they aver, that all statesmanship is mere expediency, and whac Mr. 
Sumner denounces as irjustice is the highest expediency, for it is not expe¬ 
dient to give the colored race suffrage, and no man can be called a statesman 
who puts suffrage on the ground of moral right. A*l this only shows to what 
a depth we have sunk. There ought to have been an uprising of the church 
against this iniquity so spontaneous, and a convocation and a voice of reproba¬ 
tion so strong and incessant and storm} ,tbat it would have swept all before 
it. There is no protection, no stay no insurance against the self-destruc¬ 
tive madness of human depravity, except God, justice, or some regard to it 
he adopted and held on to as the rule in human society. Whoever expects 
to supply its ilace by remission of the penalty against transgressors, and 
severity of exactions towards innocent and loyal and submissive citizens, is 
as much mistaken as it he should undertake to feed his household with pills of 
aisenic or ljavts of fulminating powder ins ead of bread. This impious 
reversal and confusion of all divine truth and injunction, administei ing in¬ 
justice to the worthy and license to the wicked, penalty to the loyal and 
impunity and reward to the rebellious, under pretence of generosity and for¬ 
giveness, cannot prosper. There must be in it the causes and insurance of 
anarchy and ruin. There are combinations of human piejudice and passions, 
occult, steblthy, unobserved, uncalculated, impossible to be measured, that, 
occurring atsuitable conjunctures in human sffairs, may tear empires asunder 
may heave up, disintegrate and scatter the best apparently constructed 
States in expksions cf which the terrible earthquake power of such a com¬ 
pound as that of nitro glycerine is but a symbol. But as such a long working 
and seemingly blind congregation of elementary forces in nature may thus 
be of omnipotence enough to rend in pieces the solid globe, if occurring at 
its centre, so may the forces of human depravity enter into a conspiracy 
perfectly unintentional, the result of which may upheave the foundations of 
society, and tear asunder and scatter the firmest institutions. 

TOE QUESTION OF TOE HOUR. 

The question is whether the American government is God’s plan of govern¬ 
ment for all the people, wi bout respect to persons, or the white man's 
government, for the white man’s rule, for the white man’s rights, as sole 
and supreme, to the subjection and exclusion of the black man’s—a govern- 



18 


meat ot the whites, with supreme and exclusive respect to persons by the 
color of the skin, as the ground and method of legislation, as the rule of 
practical wisdom and reconstruction—in fact, the ultimate principle of 
statesmanship, the compass and helm, chronometer and Bible of captains and 
mates. Have the black* in this country, under this government, any rights 
that white men are bound to respect? It is not have they any rights? but, 
any that white men are bound to respect, in case their own interests are 
supposed to stand in the way? Justice Taney never denied that black 
men have rights, but only affirmed, as a principle ot justice and practical 
legislation, that they were not equal to the white man’s, but must give way if 
the white men pleased, or if white men’s rights and black men’s came in 
competition. If white men chose to enslave biack men, then blacks had no 
right to freedom. And white men alone must determine every question of 
rights, not the blacks. The whole government must be in their hands, with 
supreme reference to their own interests, and if those interests, in the judg¬ 
ment of the whites, should require the taking away of the rights of the blacks, 
then in all ihose respects the blacks have no rights that white men are 
bound to respect. Since the admission of Colorado this is our national legis¬ 
lation. 

BOBBERY UNDEB FALSE PEETEXCLS. 

It is rema’kable that the e gentlemen, who defer their legislation so sub¬ 
missively to pub ie opini n, assume as of no consequence wha ever, the 
opinion of the n il ions wh m they are proposing to defraud. They en« 
thro* e the prejudices of the people as their gu:d-and govern r, and excuse 
the ; r iniqui ous legislation on the plea that they did not dare to go against 
thos^ prejudices ; but the opinions and just claims of a It* ge po<tion<f the 
peep e the whole co ored race, are of no more imp rtance than if they did 
not exi-t They cu r and square the r leg station to meet the prejudices and 
public opit ion <f 200,000 wh te men in South Carolina, for example, but 
300 OuO black men, a larg° m jo ity of the people of the State are de pised 
and tr-mpled with as m ch coolness and contempt as il they were so many 
Canada th 8 les. They are no more reg rded as having any claims or righ s, 
either as citizens, or as a maj >iity oi the peop e, than they were when they 
w« re s aves, t o more than if they w. re a^ain ►laves as indeed this legislation 
makes <hem. And thia palpable robbery directly folows an artie’eprovid- 
ir g that in no State shall any of the people be deprived of the immunities 
of citzens ! The negro is thrown between these millstones end ground to pow¬ 
der. This incub.tion of the Secet-si n is the c^ckat ice’s egg, which who¬ 
soever edeth di th and that which is crushed breake h out into a v per. 

It is the painful spectacle of men legislating rot for the tigh s of c tizens, 
but for the monopoly < f wrong and contriving for men, under the fr rzy 
of a cruel prejudice, the means of indu ging that prejudice, and inflict ng 
th-*t cruelty ag inst the cl<s< of innocent persons placed at their di-posal. 
That i«* the whole object of the prop sed amendmen r ; not to eecure any 
person’s rights but to take away he loyal negro’s rights Here are 3 our 
victims, take them and treat them as you please. We shall not iuterf-re. 
If you please to tike from thmn he right which we and you count dearer ’han 
life, we shall follow on and secure that robbery by count ng ihem ouc ol the 
pale of represent*'ion, to be taxed as chattels, tut not lepresented as persons. 




19 


If you count them disfranchised, we will count them nothing at all. We 
B*y nothing about co'or, but we need not remind you tint the whites are 
sacred, and as we are sure that your on’y wish is to degrade the blacks, so you 
may be confident that our only object in providing lhi« amendment of the 
omtitution is to accommodate it to your projud ces, but not to permit 
any disfranchiement of the whites. That of course is impossi’le. With 
this u- derstanding we give you full power, providing only that having robbed 
the negro of his rights, you shall not a^ume that ropres ntation of the 
negroes, as pers ns, still exists to be transferred to your account for the 
increase of yi.ur o*n political representation as whites. For the privilege of 
destr yingthe right of suffrage in the backs, and in consideration of our 
assisting \ou to do this, you must consent not to have them r presented 
as whites to your credit. We have thought it best to say nothing about color, 
but this power is put into your hands to be used solely against the blacks. 

It is the robbery of the rngro under fa’se pretences. For white m n, dis¬ 
franchisement is a penalty for crime. They c in be disfranchised for nothing 
else ; but l>jal black men may be d sfranchised for the color of their skia^) 
The negro is not there byname. But every Senitir and Be^re-entativ© 
knows that that article was framed on pu* pose to accomplish for the rebels 
their implacable prejudice and hatred, and to smo th their return into lhe 
Union by laying the road ac oss the prostrate bodies of the bl<ck<. It will 
go d <wn to posterity'hat Congress interpreted a doubtful artic e in favor 
of s a very, and set that intei pretation in the Coosti ution itself, but at 
the same time avoided ihe use of the word color, the word negro, knowing 
that <he interpreta'ion was only fur him, that the article could newr have 
been f amed for the white man, that if so framed, it wou d have been rejected. 
They have given the rebels the power to d ^franchise whom they please f„r 
other causes than crime, knowing that they never would disfranchise any 
persons but the blacks only, and th it permission is a bribe. 

The amendment is a rescript of tyranny in sympathe ic ink ; it is a d spot r c 
dec ee in cypher ; the rebels understand it. It is as if poison were contrived 
for the servants in a family, *nd put into loaves of bread »pp inted only 
for the kitchen, though seemingly the same with these consumed by the white 
aristocracy above sta rs. 



Written out, the article reads thus. White men can be d sfranchfred on’y 
^for crime, but loyal b acks miy be disfranchised for the co'or of the skin ; 
and whenever so di.franchis-d by any State, they shall be deemed and stamped 
by the United States government as Sta e chattels. 

The concealment is very clumsy, very poor. A turkey buzzard would 
see the prey ; the rebel in-tinct det cts it. Keverdy Jobns< n’s ep eob seiz d 
upon it insanty, and applied the whole artic e to the blacks, a guing that 
by it the votmg property of many thousand whites in the blacks of Ma y and 
was destro)ed, while in South Carolina mo-e than half the mate ial tf white 
rep'-esentititm in black chattels was nullified. It was a l right that b acks 
should be denied thevot* ; this was no robbery of the blacks; but to re¬ 
fuse to give the whites the beuefit of their franchise was an intolerable in- 
just ce and thefr. This could not be endured. 

Churches silent on that. But what about the outrage of robbing the whole 
colored race of the right of suffrage? This is far worse than burning twelve 


20 


school-houses and churches. If the first outrage had not been committed 
the second would not have been possible, or if committed in a single in* 
stance, would have been instantly punished. If the church and school-house 
of any white congregation had been burned down, immediately the incendia¬ 
ries would have been brought to justice. It is the vote that makes the differ¬ 
ence. The nation robs these persons of the vote, and we need not be aston¬ 
ished if any other vi lains take what they please. And the churches that 
would be silent while they are robbed of the vote could not be expected 
to speak out if robbed of churches and school-houses. But which is the guilti¬ 
est silence? 

* It is a question regarded by the church in Switzerland, the country of 

Zuiogle and of Tell, so vital, that they deem it their duty as followers of Christ 
to appeal to this country in behalf of the rights of the colored race. Yet the 
churches here are silent. The outrages of church burning do not require a 
remonstrance so imperiously as the outrage of destroying the right of suffrage 
by reason of the color of the skin. If the churches are silent, they consent. 
I was a stranger and y e took me not in, hungry und ye fed me not, naked 
and ve cluthc d me not, sick and in prison and ye visited me not. But L rd, 
did we not establish the Sanitary Commission, and the Freedmen’s Bureau, and 
the Civil Rights bill? When saw we thee a stranger and took thee not in? 
When saw we tbee a hungered and fed thee not, or thirsty and gave thee no 
drink, or naked and clo hed thee not? Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of 
these my brethren, ye did it net to me. I was amoDg you as a stranger 
with a colored skin, and ye denied to me the privilege* which for yourselves 
you claimed as dearer than life. Ye excommunicated me as a stranger, and 
denied me the children’s bread. Ye branded and hunted me as an outcast and 
a paiiah on account of the color (f my skin. And ye did all this under the 
same plea of State necessity, by which Caiaphas and the Pharisets j istified 
the crucifying of the Son of God, that it was expedient ihat one man should 
die for the peep’e, and that ihe whole ration perish not. The same p ea by 
which Berod jus ified the murder of John ; the same by which Pilate released 
Barabbas but gave up Christ to the will of his murderers. 


II 


HISTORICAL SKETCH AND ARGUMENT, 


HISTOBT OF THE BIGHT OF BEPRESENTATION FB^M ITS ESTABLISHMENT IN 1774 

TO IT8 DENIAL IN 1666. 

The first Continental Congress in 1774 was “composed of delegates chosen 
in the various colonies, some by the leg'slitive body, some by the popular 
representative branch 'hereof, and some by conventions of the f eople, accord¬ 
ing to the several means and local circumstances of each colony.” This is the 
record of Justice Story on the Constitu'ion. The delegates in the seond 
Congress of 1775 were chosen principally by conventions of the people in the 
several colonies. It was this bolv that in 1776 issued the Declaration of In¬ 
dependence The Corgis in 1774 drew up and adopted a deolarati >n of 
rights, affirrairg, “That the inhabitants of the English Colonies in North 
America, by the immu abie laws of nature, the principles of the E nrlish Con- 
sti ution. and the several charters or compact-, have the following right*.” 
Among them are, that they are entitled to life, liberty, and propeity, and that 
the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right of the 
people to pa'ticipate in their legislative ouncil ; and a* the English Colonies 
are rot represented, and from their local and other circumstances ca-mot 
properly be represented in the B'itish Parliament, they are entit’ed to a free 
and exc usive power of legis’ation in their several provincial legislatures, 
where their right of representation can alone be preserved. The articles 
were extended to the number of ten, “ all and each of which the a ( oresaid 
deputies in beha’f (f themselves and their constituent* do claim, demand and 
insist on. as their indubitable right* and liberties, which cannot be legally 
taken from them, altered or abridged, by any power whatever, without their 
own couseritby their representatives in their several provincial legislatures.’* 

Th=* rght of representation, which is the right of suff-age, is here set down 
as a right of all the people by the immutable laws of nature, in other words a 
natural right. 

On this declaration of righ s, and growing out of it, followed in 1776 the 
Declaration of Independence. « We hold the-e truths to be self-evident: that 
all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with cer¬ 
tain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among 
men, deriving their just powers f-om the consent of the governed.” 

Life, liberty, and the r ursuit of happiness are here presented as natural and 
inalienable rights, net following, or growing out o r , or conferred by any civil 



22 


or political organization of government, but going before all government, and 
at the founda'ion. To secure these rights a representative government is 
equally a right, and to secure that, the right of suffrage. If the right to life, 
liberty, and property is a na’ural right, then, whatever is absolutely neces¬ 
sary to secure that, is a natural right also. So our fathers judged tor them¬ 
selves and their posterity, the people of the United States. 

It was added by them, as a usurpation by the King of Greot Britain, for the 
establishment of an absolute tyranny over the States, “ that he had refused to 
pass otbtr laws for the accc modation cf large districts of people, unless those 
people w< u'd relinquish the light of representation in the legislature ; a right 
inestimable to them, and formidab e to tyrants ODly.” This was presented a9 
a justification of the revolution. 

Let it be considered how much greater and more absolute than this is the 
tyranny of pr< c’aiming edicts, taking away the right of representation 
from large dirtricts of people, from more than half of the whole free people 
of a S'ate, as f »r example in the States of South Carolina and Mississippi, 
This kingly act of tyranny was contained in Pre ident Johnson’s government 
of the colored citizens of the United States by [reclamations depriving them 
o.’ the right of representation on account of the color of their skin. The 
number of free citizens from whom President Johnson thus took away the 
rigbt of suffrage by proclamation, without authority from any legislative de¬ 
partment of the United States government, was greater than tha whole num¬ 
ber of inhabitants of the Colonies in 1776, refused the right of representation 
by the King of England. 

It may be added, as in the case cf our fathers, that the right of representa¬ 
tion thus taken away from free colored citizrns of the Uiited States by the 
President is “a right inestimable to them, and formidable onlv to tyrants.” 
It may be added also that they as well a-> our fathers and ourselves have the 
right to claim demand and insist upon this and other rights as their indubita¬ 
ble rights and liberties, which cannot 1-g^l y be taken from them, altered or 
abridged, by aDy power whatever, without their own consent by their repre¬ 
sentatives. 


ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION. 

After the Declaration of Independence, came the Constitution of the first 
Federal government of the United States of America. Article 4th in the 
Articles of Confederation provided tba% “ The better to secure and perpetu¬ 
ate mutual friendship and intercourse among the peoplerof the different States 
in this Union, the free inhabitants cf each of tbe*e States, paupers, vagabonds, 
and ft g'tives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and im¬ 
munities of free citizens in the several States.” All the privileges of ci izen- 
ship are here guaranteed, always and every where, to all Lee inhabitants or 
citizens without ie 9 pect to race or complexion. 

On this article was founded the provision of the same nature in Section 2 of 
Article 4, cf our present Constitution. “The citizens of each State shall be 
enti’led to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” 

“The Constitution,” says Justice Story, “ bas wisely created a general 
citizenship, communicating to the citizens of each State who have their domi- 


eii in another, all the privileges and immunities erjoytd by the citizens of 
the latUr. ! * No ex post /ado law can deiraud any dies of these claims, 

THE COLORED RACE BOTH CITIZENS AND VOTERS, WHEN OCR PRESENT 
constitution was framed. 

The present Constitution having been Iramed in 1789, the fint Congress 
governing the country under it were assetnbltd the 4 h of Marth A789, with 
Washington President, and John Adams Vice-President. 

At the time when this Constitution was ad* pte d, as ako when the 4th Article 
of the Articles of Conledeiation had been passed, persons ot color were tree 
inhabitants, citizens and voters in nearly all the Siatts. Only in the State of 
8 >uih Carolina was there any exclusion from the right i f s..if rage on account 
of mlo\ S.u h Carolina had inserted the word white in order to exclude 
theblacki. When the Congress of the Conit del ation w ere debating on the 
article declaring the Iree inhabitant ot each State entitled to ail the immuni¬ 
ties and privileges of lree citizens in the several States, viiihout distil ction ot 
color or race, South Carolina moved that only lree white inhabi ants should 
be so entitled, which motion was negatived, and ihe attempt to exclude from 
the right of suff age Colored persons, was thus r jeeted and ondemned. 

Agaio, South Carolina attempted the same exclu-ion by moving to insert, 
alter the provision securing the rights ot the lree inhabitants oi etch State to 
all the privileges and immunities ot iree citizens in ibe several States, ihe lol* 
lowing condition : *• according to the law ot such States reepictively kr the 
government ot their own free white iuhabitaits.” Tins was also negatived 
aud refused, to tLat tois article, both in the government ot the Confedera¬ 
tion, and ot cur present Union m the Constitution, proves in ihe clearest pos¬ 
sible manner that it was not intended lo leave it in the power ol any State or 
the people or legislature of any State to exclude colored person* lrooi the 
light ol sulk age, or to limit that right to the lree white inhabitants. Never¬ 
theless, what cur lathers r*j cied with indignation and scorn, and would not 
purchase the adherence ot a State to the Uuiou by yielding one iota, it is now 
proposed that we submit to and receive into the Coustitni jq, in Older that, 
alter ihe rebellion in behalt cf slavery, South Carolina may le urn into the 
Union with the right ot excluding her whole co ored population of lree citi¬ 
zens lioui ihe right ol representation, solely on account oi ihe color oi their 
skin. 

DISQUALIFICATION BY COLOR IMPOSSIBLE IN THE CONSTITUTION. 

The interpreiation ot the first Article in cur present Constitution, req liring 
the people ol the States to vote lor representatives ot the United States ac¬ 
cording as they vote lor representatives ot their own S ates is determined be¬ 
yond question by the action of our lathers in the Confederation and in the 
lraming and adoption ol the Constitution, as forbidding any exclusion cf a 
class by coior. Whatever other qualifications might be required, or condition 
imposed, that of color should not be permitted. The people of each Sate 
were people irrespective ot color, and as being the people were admitted and 
requited to vote for United States representatives and no qualification of 
color or race was allowed. It was distinctly tried and rejeced, in two 
Separate forms and attempts, and the article adopted was adopted under the 
knowledge and guidance of such trial and rejection. 


24 


The attempt of South Carolina to engraft the element of a slave despotism 
by color of the skin upon the Constitution, so unanimously condemned and 
rejected by the fathers and framers, is now bung renewed. It was first pro¬ 
posed in the present Congress, in 1865, to amend the Constitution so as to re¬ 
ceive into it tint identical proposition of South Carolina, and that proposed 
au endment passed the House of Representative* by a l*rge v te. Only by 
the firmness of the Senate for tne moment were we prevented from being 
brought round as a nation to that p int of tyranny and baseness, where South 
Carolina stood al ne a huudred y-ars ago, au J where then the n^tu n would 
have become a nation without her, rather than receive her into its Union with 
the iniq ity of such a tyranny brought with her. 

The nation then, though weak in ;ts infancy, was strong in its integrity, 
and would not i urchase the membership of South Carolina by the sacrinee of 
the rights of the colored ^ac \ To- lay the na i >n in is strength is insulted 
with the jropositon to a ttend t’ e Constitution, in order that South Carolina 
may be brought b^ck with the ri^ht to tranij le on the colored race guaran etd 
by the Un ted States govern met t. In the n*me of Sta e soveri n y that rwht 
of injustice is (launed. But we a-e a hundred yeais a' esd of that iniqui y, 
and in the name of God and humanit* it must be fo hidde n In the »econ- 
6 traced government the pro ecdon of the citizens is (■«!• gre*t work, not 
State.rights, exc *pt for the accom,. lishrmn r o' j is ice. I f S'a e soveietgn’y 
secures protection of the cit zm j , it m«y be gr >n ed, n t othe~»ise. Ju tice 
is all the s-t iteouan^biip we need, and the govern neat cannot, like a dishonest 
tradesman, put its pr pu y out of it* hands, and then siy, I have no means. 

CASE OP CAB01IVA, MASSACHUSETTS AND JUDGE HOAB. 

Meantime, before the recent retn lli m, SoU h Ca"' ltna had sgHn and again 
violated and nullified the article adopted by the Confcdera i m, and renewed 
in the Constifuion, pro'ec i"g the rights of citizens ; mr has the national 
government ever dared to lift a fi ger for the chastisement of such violation 
or the pro ectioa of the injured pe<soas. Wheu Massachusetts sent one 
of her most venerable and respected cit z ms to plead her rights, and to de¬ 
fend that art cle in court, the peopl j of croutk Carolina drove him from their 
shores w th i suit and outrage. This was the venerable Judge Ho ir. 

Are we to day in our senses or insane, or is it the delirium of a nightmair, 
that <he proposition has been mad-* to enthrone the right < f such outrages 
and the i rinciple of such a violation of the fundament 1 law of our 1 berties, 
in the Constitution itself, bv the alteration of its text for that pu pos- ? 

It is now for the fir-t t me iu our power to chastise the insolent domination 
of South C-rol na by the enforcement of justice This is a >ipe fruit of the 
rebellion, and is worth all the cost all the blood, all the sacrifice of the four 
years <ivil va-. If we tefuse to avail ourselves of this opportunity, it we 
reconstruct the Union with this infin te iniquity in it, we merely lay the cer¬ 
tainty of another civil war, and a war of races as a julgment from the Al¬ 
mighty. in the choice of our own msdness. 

DISFBANCdISEMENT BY COLOB IMPOSSIBLE IN THE CONSTITUTION. 

There is anther proof of the impossibility of foisting color into the Gon- 
st : tat : on or permitting States to disfranchise whnle clashes of Un ted States 
citizens f jr other causes than crime, in the terms of representa ive appor- 


25 


tionmenr, whioh are such as put the interpretation of the 1st clause in the 
second section of the first article beyond question, forbidding the proposed 
d ^qualification by color of the skin. 

By thes j terms, the rule of representation in the several States is grounded 
on the whole number of free persons. Without respect to color or race, they 
are to be represented, 1 hey are to be taxed, there is no right of 'axation 
w.thout rep resentation ; there is no po sibility of representation without *-uf- 
frage. Hence the denial of suffrage to free inhabitants is that exact and 
absol te ty ranny which our fa hers pronounced to be slavery and to be resisted 
by firms. Any class < f ci izens deprived of ihe right of sufF< age is Ih reby ti eed 
from allegiance. The govcrnm nt has no r ght of g >vernm nt over men <rom 
whom is takes away the right of raj res niation If tuch government be 
enforced, it ceases to be a free government, and bec.mes a tyranny, and the 
subj cth n to it a slavey. 

PBOCF FROM THE CENSUS. 

The great object of the Census is an equ tab’e representation of the inhabi¬ 
tants of alt the Stitts. Is is an enumerition of tho poj ulat on without 
respect 10 race or color, to be repmsented and taxed. No c a*s can be 
exclud d from representation any more than from taxation. Represeutat.on 
is the condition ot the r ght both of taxation and government. 

Of this fi st and funiamer til principle of the government of the American 
peojl^ by representatives rmanatug direity from ti emi-elves, Justice Stmy 
remarks, “Their own experience as Col nists, as w< 11 »s the expernnc? of 
the parent ci u t y *nd t?.e general deductions of the<ry had <-et led it »s a 
fundamental principle of a free government, that no laws ought to be passed 
w thout the consent of the people, through representative! immedattly 
ohosen by and responsible t > them.” 

The meaning of the first article is thus put beyond a reasonable doubt; 
though if there were a doub 1- , the unver-al rule of civ 1 z d and Christiin 
jurisprudence requires the benefit of the doubt to be g ven to the side of 
liberty. But theie is no room for doubt, the thing having be n decided not 
only on general prim iyles, but by a case in court when the C nstitution was 
framed embodyiuu: ihose principles. The Cons itution of ihe Unbel States 
not o ly does not leave it in the po *er of a *y State to exclude any of i s free 
inhabitants from the right of suffr ge on account of colo 1 -, b it is so worded 
as to 'O' bid and prevent any State from such * xclusion. With other requ red 
conditions or disqualifications the Constitut on does not spec fical y interfere, 
but it does w th th>s. The people, by the Constitution have torridden the 
National governments and the State governments from ever disqualifying the 
free inhabitants of any Sia’e by color or race, or depriving them of that right 
of suffrage which is one of the fundamental immunities and privileges of citi¬ 
zenship. The prop sition to legis'a e by color was before the ramers of our 
government, was pressed upon them, and repuiiaied by them, and with this 
proposition distinctly in vi-w, they f-o framed the Constitution as to frrb d it. 

In the light of tlnse indispu’a^le fact-, what is to be said of the attempt a 
hundred yea-s afterwards, on the conclusion cf a reb-llion for the peri etual 
enslavement of the colored race, to j ut that O'ijiinally riject d proposition 
iDt > the Constitut on, amende! for that pirpo-e, in order to con-dlit’e the 
rebel States, and puroha-e back their friendship and alliance by giving up the 


26 


colored race into their power! Surely, histo y nev*r recorded a greater 
infamy than this. 

GUA.BA.NTEE OF SUFFRAGE IN TU« CONSTITUTION. 

Freedom of the ex rci-e of telig : on, fre d >m of speech and of the pre ; s, 
freed m of ;etition for the ledress *f grievances, are not more tx l»ci ly 
guar'lotted to the people by the Comt tution <h*n freedom • f representation. 
The e is no more r ght under the Constitution to take away the right of 
voting fr< m any por ion of the people on accou< t of the color of the skin, 
than there is to do th s on account of th^ir bel eving in th-* Sav our • f the 
wot Id. Tbe ritht of free r< bpious fa th do s nut belong to t e p op e any 
more universe ly than the right of representation. The same mat be said of 
the rght < f f ee s. ee* h. There is as much ground ior taking away the free¬ 
dom o> speech and o* the press from a portion of the pe pie becau e they are 
colon d persons, as for taking a *»y the rigl t of i ej resen a io >. Thes«me 
may be eai 1 of the right to testify and to m ke coi tr*c s, which we have 
guar lei by the Ci'il Rights bill, o lotting ihe right of si*ff »ge. Ye there is 
no more obligation or i O Aer in government to protect the right to testify or 
to make contract-*, than the right to vote ; nor any more rLht in the govern- 
nn nt to withh 1J that right on account of color or t<> pern it it to b- witbhell 
th-n the light to testify in courts. If any of the .'fates could take a*ay the 
right of rep esentation from a clas^ of its tree inhabita ts, by statutes agamst 
color, so they could any other right, and irom any other cla-*e, b s atutea 
against any personal peculiarity. Red hair would be as justifiable a cause of 
denial of the right of suffrage as a dark complexion; and Celtic blood as 
Ethiopian. Red hair is a personal peculiarity A < o ored skin is nothing 
more. Yet who s ipposes tha r . Congress would permit any one of the States 
to exclude from representation all persons having red hair, much less that a 
bil ’or amen ing the Constitution to allow a ,'tate <o » xclude red-haired per¬ 
sons from represen ation could pass tbe House of Representatives? Yet it is 
only a personal peculiarity. If buch legi lat on were cons ltutional any St^te 
legislature could ex l ide persons of any particular trade or occupation from 
being considered as a t art of the people, and could thus deprive them of all 
the rights guaranteed to the | eo le by the Constitution, and belonging to 
them by citizenship. CitizenNhip is worthless if the right of suffrage does not 
go with it It might not be in a monarchy, bat it is in a re, ublio. 

Just ce Story declared that “a perfect equality of rights j rivileges, and 
rank was contem, lated by the Constitu ion am ng all cit zens.” 

Mad son dec ared that “ m a free government the >ec rity for civil rights 
must be tbe same as that for religious iRht-*.” They belong > qually to nil 
classes and can n> more be taken away irom a particular class, by bl od or 
the color of tbe sk n, than the right to worship God acoording to tbe con¬ 
science can be taken away. 

TEBBITORIAL ORDINANCE CF 1787. 

Intermediate between our present Constitution and that of the Articles of 
Confederation there had ar sen the Or-’inance for th© government of the 
North-western territory, framed and established by the Congress in 1'87. 
The natural and universal r ghts of freedom and representation are here also 
fully recognized and guaranteed. “The inhabitants of the said territory 


27 


shall always he entitled to the benefits of a proportionate represent ition of 
the peo, le in the legis'atjre,” “ one representative lor every five hundred 
free male inhabitants ” 

As to the new States to be formed in the sa : d territory, “Whenever any of 
the said fctates shall have sixty thuusand free inhabitints therein, such State 
sh» 1 be admitted by it* d legates, into the Congress of the Un ted States, on 
an equa' footing with the orig Dal States in all respects whatevtr ; anl shall 
be at liberty to form a i ermanent Coustitut on and State government, pro* 
vided the destitution and g vemment s > to be formed shall be republican, 
and in conformi y to the p incite-* contained in these articles.*'—Article G. 
There fhi 1 be t either slavery nor inv »)u' t*ry servi ude in the sa d territory, 
otherwise than in the i uni hment of crime, whereot the pa ty shal have been 
duly < onvicted.”- -Now. in comj a i on with tbi< ordinance by Congress or 
the admission of States in 1787 and for the government of the peo le and the 
guarantee of their rights, the ordinance by Fresiden'ial proclamation in 1865 
for the admission of rebel States into the Union was a return to something 
worse thau the tyranny against which our fithers revolted. Tut the ordi¬ 
nance proposed by Congress in 1866 by amendment ol the Constitution for 
that purpose is still worse. 

For t’ is last ordinance, which the Committee of Fifteen propose, and 
which Congress have adopted, and now ask the States to recognize and 
establish runs thus ; Th-re may be, at the pleasure of the Statts, both prac¬ 
tical slavery and involuntary servitude in t e said rebel States by the dis¬ 
franchisement of the colored race lor the pun shmentof their loyalty and the 
color of their skin, of which combined crimes no conviction shall be reces¬ 
sary ; but the fre* inhabitants that are not whites in the rebel Sates shnll be 
adjnlged guilty of ttie crime of color, and :-hall be deprived of the right of 
representation by suffrage, on tl at account, to conciliate the rebels. 

The history of the natural right of representation b, suffrage claimed by 
the fathers of the count y, and framers of the Constitution, tor all the free 
inhabitants of the land, is brought to its conclusion in J8ti6, hy the den al of 
the natural r ghc of representation by suffrage, anl the exclusion of all 
persons of color from if, all persons who are not white, first, by Presidential 
proclamation, s cond, hy amendment of the Coustitut on giving to the States 
theiigt trf disfrancbisi g the people at pleasure. The end of the experi¬ 
ment of our father-, at which the whole world have been gazing with hope, is 
the est-bl shment t f a white man’s govt-rnment, wi h the rescr pt of Ameri¬ 
can j mtice i i the Dred Scotr deii ion at its fouadati n, That black men have 
no rights tint whi e men are bouna io respect. 

Comrasc wi h 'his the declaration of Mt i-on and Hamilton in the Fede- 
rali-t. in reua d to the colored nee, that, “It i- admit ed that if the laws 
were to restore the rghts w h ch have been taken away thbnegioes could 
NO 1 ONOEIt BE REFUSED AN EQUAL SHARE OF REPRESENTATION WITH a HE OTHER 
INHABITANTS 

1174 AND 1865 IN CONTRAST. 

Thus stands the case between the first Continental Congress in 1774. snd 
the last Congr. ss of the United States government in 1866, In the first the 
leading pa riots of onr country proclaimed the right of represen ation, the 
right of the vote, aa b:longing to a 1 free persons, to be the findamenal and 


28 

o 

vi f al element of a frea republio. They affirmed that the citizens could not be 
divestt d of in wibout bee m ; ng slaves. They ro*e in arms against the gov¬ 
ernment of Grea* Britain b cause it was withheld from them. 

In 1866 a leading Senator has argued, in support of the proposed amend¬ 
ment giving to itbel States the right of dhfranchii-ing the blacks. ih»t the 
right of suffrage is not in law one < f the privileges and immunities s i cured 
by the (Jen tit »tion. And he has affirmed (S nator Howard of Michigan) 
“that the pe< pie’s light of suffrage has n >t been regarded as one of tbo.*e 
fundamental u'gh's lying at the founda ion of our society, and without which 
people cannot ex st witnout be ; ng s’avtg. or subjected to a despotism This 
atstrti n can be made in the face of the known history of our revolu ion, and 
of the Declaratun of Independence. 

In 1776 ihe C mgress guaranteed for all free inhabitants all the rights of 
citfzens, irrespective of colrr. In 1866 they have proposed a Constitutional 
guarantee for the rebel States of the right of taking away from the free col¬ 
ored inhabitants the primal and vital right of free citizenship, the right of 
representation. 

They have refused to vote for the right of suffrage for the colored rsC3 in 
the District of Columbia. They have voted that the State < f Colorado should 
be admitted to the Union with the colored race disfranchised. They have 
refused to pa«s either of the many bills proposed giving the right of soff age 
to the colored race. The present amendment is the conclusion to give to 
each State, as they had voted to give to Colorado, the right of exc’uding the 
colored race from suffrage on aco >unt of olor. There is no other object or 
intent. For nothing else is any amendment r< qffsite, for nothing else was 
there any ihought < f contriving it, it means no'hing else though it accom¬ 
plishes a great deal more, for the sake of bringing that about. For the sake 
of oppressing the blocks the whites are willing to put themselves under the 
same S ate despotism. 

If it had not been for the sake of disfranchising the blacks no provision 
would ever have been made or thought of for disfranchi ing the whites, or 
giving to the States the privilege of disfranchising the white population at 
pleasure. When was that ever proposed? It is only in order to reach the 
blacks that it is now permi ted, or the supposition of its possibility endured ; 
and i* is done simply because it is well understood and known that this pen¬ 
alty of disfranchisement never will be visited, never can, never was intended 
to be visited up m any portion of the white population, who always have the 
right of voting unquestioned, and are the luiogcUss, the only cl iss repre¬ 
sented in ihe rebtl States, and in many of the free S ates. 

DISFRANCHISEMENT FOR OTHER CAUSES THAN CRIME. 

The Committee have so con rived the secti n etrp iwering the rebel States 
to disfranchise the negroes, that if disfranchised for any other cause than 
treason or crime, they could not be counted in as mateiial of white represen¬ 
tation ; and they argue that an inducement is thus preim’ed, under the force 
of wh'ch the wbi r e rebel population may refrain from exerc'sing the power 
of disfranchisement which has been jrovidel for them. For instance they 
may be induced in S <uth Carolina, for the sake of that increase of Sta*e re- 
preaen'ation in the United States government which a p pulttion of two or 
three hundted thousand negroes wi h the right to vote would give them, they 


29 


may be induced to avoid disfranchising them, and to give them the right to 
vo’e. But the provii n of the Committee was, If disfranchised (or any other 
cause ihan crime, that is. if disfranchised for color, the? cannot be counted 
in the popu aMon as a basis for the rejresentation of the Sa e. But if dis- 
franchished f r crime, then, although the vote be token from them, they 
wou’d still be numbered with the whites as a basis of wh te ^presentation. 

In this case, what is to hinder the S ate fr< m enacting statutes against 
crime, of such a nature, with such technicalities, and with the dUab lity of 
voting attached as the penalty, that the whole negro race shall be thus dis¬ 
franchised for the vi lation of local Jaw. Thus the provision of the Commit¬ 
tee giving the power of disfranch ; seraent might be use< 1 , and the whole race 
disfranchised accordingly, at d sti 1 the whole power of the number of that 
disfranchised race counted in for the repres ntation of the State accord Dg to 
its numbers. Criminals are not counted out from the census of Stat“ popula¬ 
tion for voting, but colored skin* are. Therefore, by putting all co ored per¬ 
sons in the category of eliminate, their right of voting may be tak*n aw«y 
from them as individuals, but given tu the State as p pul&tion. B ing 
colored they cannot Vote ; being criminals, they a e counted amoog the 
whites for the purpose of an increase of the white v;te by State popula¬ 
tion. Persons disfranchised merely for crime mav be so c un el. Now, 
then, oount the black race as criminals and jou give the wh te race 
the power of their vote, at the same time that 3 ou take it away from them¬ 
selves. When it is arranged by the Committee that disfranchisement for any 
other cause than crime nullifies the representative baste by the population so 
disfranchised, it is color and color alone that is contempla’ed under the speci¬ 
fication of any other cause. For no other cause are citizens disfranchise ; for 
no cause than c ime are whites ever disfranchised ; fur any other cause blacks 
alone are disfranchised. 


III 


OUR OPPORTUNITY FROM GOD. 


Law and justice are not incidents, but eternal realities. Law and justice 
are ihe eternal train ; the veto is only a patent brake ; the train must go on 
again. If the brakesman interrupt by nrstake, incoherence, (r in the inter¬ 
est if a monopoly of wren?, his place wi 1 be supp'ief, and the train will 
march on. The own r of the line has put the colored > ace on board, and 
where the train goes they go. and it gors f r them as for the wbi r e lace. This 
is God’s Time aod Freight Table, and neither unjust legislation nor veto can 
prevent it. 

The question is up and never will go down sgain, of the inherent, absolute 
right of the black man to the tuff age as well as the white man. Inch by 
inch the ground is cot.tested. Stop with the right of property, liberty, 
family, witnessing, suing and being sued, changing masters, wages, con¬ 
tracts ; let that be enough. We wilt grant all that, but stop there. Stop with 
civil rights, let that be sufficient, but keep the polit e il rights f »r white men. 
But no ! Not one j >c or tittle wil j ltfcice yield. Pi 1 t cal rights do not belong 
any more naturally or exelusiv. ly to whits men than to black men, b it equally 
to both. They are recessary tor the defense of civil. Take away a man’s 
political rights and he will *-oen have no civil ones le t. Take away his right 
to suffrage, and his civil debtors will takeaway his right to tes ify and his 
right to sue, and his right to schools, aod his right tj chojse his master, 
and his wages, and his religion. 

Po ideal lights are as Datura! fir min undei a free government as civil 
rights; if they bel >ng to white men as m-mber# of society, so aod in the 
same degree to bltck men. That i? justice, aod j isliee w>li not yield one inch. 
God has put justice above color. This is our vantage g ouud, our advanced 
position. God has set us forward every stage in this gr at battle, further 
than we intended, further than we thought. When the >ke of each c mil ct 
has blown away, and we thought we were campi 'g down where we were be 
fore, we find tbat G id has moved both f-rce^, even io the heat ot ba tie 
far ahead. Another position has to be occupied, another intrenchment 
secured. When God puts up a q iesti in, n > v. to cao put it down. God’s 
standard is beyond, and thilher ail ihe foroes must tro< p, ev c n though they 


31 


be fighting ail the way. Absolute justice for the black man as for the white. 
This is Goo’s edict, tli* is freedom’s watchword, tbia is our Noith Star. 

4 DIABOLICAL ATTACHMENT PROPOSED TO BE PATENTED IN THE CONSTITUTION. 

WILL THE PEOPLE ACCEPT ? 

The proposed amendment t> the Constitution giving to the late rebel States 
ihe light of disfranchising persons of c »lor is an act of ♦ xcommunication, 
launched ag*inst millions of free perso is cutting them off fr.m the privileges 
cf ci izns. 

It tu-na the Constitution from a covenant of freedom and jus ie? into an in- 
dicmei t of accusation and sentence of penary against millions innooent of 
any cr m°, whose r’ght to pn t cii »n and chance ot happiness, but for that 
inst'-ument of toiture, would be at least ♦ qual to that of their fellow ii izsns. 

It is an in be tnent against < ne class, in the name of another and the reign¬ 
ing clasp. it i-augurabs and estsb ishes a war of race-* in the Consti'uion 
it»elf. It is a pr-vi ion by which millions of a particular race ai d corn- 
pl< xion may be made and kept serfs. It changes 'h^ Constitution from 
a charrer of rights to a o inveyanrer and covenant cf n jiri s 

It is semewnat such a change as would be m«de in tur sewing machines 
by means of an a trebment by the inst>umenalitv of which the garments 
that ar^ turned off lor the weaiing of the poor should be made to convey a 
m»-l gn^nt hereditary disease through ihe pore-* < f the skin ; all poor pe >ple 
bei< g compelled to wear th*se girmems, <r g> n-ked, or b* expatriit d. 

If it w*s a freak < f Nero’s deepoti-m to set the Chiistiar s f»»t^, c o hed 
in the skins < f w*ld beaog, f r thei** enemies t > toi ture, and that i- reg rded 
as one < f the mo-»t monstrous a'r icities rrc *rded in hist try; w* apptng them 
up in the skins i f bea ts, and then setting them on fire in the streets ot Rome; 
what shall be said of marking millions ot our fellow-cht i-tians by Jegirla inn 
for contempt and injury by the color of the skin wiih which God has 
created them, and then and thus driving them forth out of the pale of the 
Constitution, as a herd of outcasts, upon whom their enemies may shower the 
arrowsof their cruelty ? For this is what we are doing wiih them, in taking 
away from them by reason of their color the rights which we claim for 
ourselves by reason of our manhood, and which we say are our own only 
protection from tyranny. 

If fll these millions of the colored race, now excluded from the right of 
suffrage, had been of the poor white trash, not one of them would have 
been excluded from that privilege, nor would anything have been said or 
done by the President requiring their < xc udon, nor would there have been 
any discovery of a gieat danger to the c rnntry or it** liberties from receiving 
such a mass of ignorance to the re sponsibility of the vote. There would 
have been no reto utior S in the Cooper Iosti ute requiring the »xcludon of 
three mi lions from he vote on account of ignorance. Had these millions 
been white rrbtl-*, and had they all borne arms against the government of 
the Uoired States for four years, they would have been rtc ived buck to 
the vote, although not one of them o >uld read or write, ncr would the 
President have attempted to < x dude any of them from the right of stff age, 
nor would the Cooper Institute have echoed any w*rning of ihe peril of 
admitting them to such right, nor would it have been admitted ib*t the 


32 


State had any right to disfranchise them, nor would it have been contended 
that the right of such disfranchisement is an element of Srat8 sovereignty. 
The right of a State to disfranchise any portion of its citizens except for 
crime would never have been admitted, if there had been none but white 
men in the State. 

THE CONTROVERSY BETWEEN OUR GOVERNMENT AND GOD. 

Our government has no subjects but citizens. All are citizens that owe 
allegiance. Subjects that are rot citizens are in effect slaves. Citizens 
without the right of representation we call slaves. We did describe them 
as such when we ourselves were fighting for freedom, and we proclaimed to 
all the world that we were laying our government on such principles, that 
none should be governed who were not represented in the government as 
a government of their own choice, supported by their votes. Now the set¬ 
ting apart of a class of citizens to be governed without representation on the 
ground that they are strangers of another race is the renewal of the crime, 
with great exasperation of its impiety, on account of which God gave up the 
Jewish State to destruction. And God who spared not them, knoweth how 
to reserve ihe uDjust now unto judgment to be punished. 

THE RIGHT CF CITIZENSHIP AND SUFFRAGE CO ORDINATE WITH THE RIGHT CF 

GOVERNMENT. 

1 . It is a right from God, the right of peaceful self-protection according to 
God’s ordinance of government for the defence of well-doers from the evil, for 
which purpose the well disposed have the right of choosing for themselves 
such persons as they can confide the government in the hands of, 1 or just 
those divine objects, and that divine benevolence. 

2. It is therefore a right of citizenship, correspondent with and consequent 
upon the claim and nature of allegiance on the part of the government, while 
in itself it is only a covenant with the people under the authority of God. If the 
government can claim any man as a citizen, and require his obedience as a 
citizen, in that very claim they acknowledge his right of representation as 
an essential, inseparable right and possession of his citizenship. 

3. As a right of citizenship it may become or be regarded as being a polit¬ 
ical right, but not on that account any the less natural, not on that account 
to be regarded as not the property of the citizen, but of the government. Is 
a white man’s right of suffrage to be denied or annihilated by saying that it 
is a political right? An easy and convenient way this would be of destroy¬ 
ing every right in succession, by the epithet political. A man’s rights are none 
the less natural because they are political. They become political the moment 
he commits them in trust to the rulers and representatives to be guarded by 
them according to the political constitution. The right of suffrage is no more 
a political right than the right of appointing trustees to take care of all your 
other rights. And the right of appointing guardians of your rights is no more 
political than any one of those rights to be guarded. 

The right of appointing guardians or watchmen is as natural as any of the 
rights that are to be watched, as the right of building and owning a salaman¬ 
der safe is as natural as the right of purchasing and holding bonds or bankbills 
or any kind of property. Suppose the government, or the democracy, or the 


33 


State sovereignty should forbid you from owning a salamander safe, on the 
plea that that was political, whereas your property to be taken care of was 
natural. Your property is naturally your own, but a safe can belong to you 
ODly politically, and you must a*k the government for it, and they have a 
perfect right to deny it, if they please, and to compel you to leave all your 
securities at the mercy of fire and flood, thieves and robbers. 

Just so it is with the pretence that suffrage is a political capacity conferred 
by the government but not naturally belonging to the people. You never 
heard of this doctrine until it became necessary for rebels and rebel sympa¬ 
thizers to trample down the colored race by means of it. It never was 
broached nor dare it be broached now, for white men ; it is only for the 
blacks. Our fathers and our father’* covenant made the right of suffrage 
the right of all, and not a political artificial creation or investment but a 
natural right, without which there is no light of government. It is only for 
the sake of trampling on the colored race that we have renounced these prin¬ 
ciples. There would never have been any denial of the natural right of 
suffrage, if it had not been considered a necessary or most convenient and 
efficacious me hod of degrading and enslaving the colored race. The natural 
right of slavery is consistently maintained by those who deny the natural 
right of suffrage. 

4. It is a right of free agency, and of reason, of intelligent manhood, a right 
created and conferred of God in the very attributes and necessities of human¬ 
ity, and above all a Christian zed humanity. It is a Christian right, and as 
such is committed to the Christian church with the duty of demanding and 
protecting it for those who are deprived of it. And under the gospel dis¬ 
pensation when man had been taught of God and renewed by his Spirit, the 
right of suffrage appeals in spiritual freedom and glory, the birthright of all. 
The learned and the ignorant, Jews and Gentiles, barbarians, Scythians, bond 
and free, black and white, all races, complexions, grades, were equal with 
this Christian right of suffrage, the symbol and the exercise of self-government 
and freedom. 

As then, so now, it is the right of all Christians, irrespective of race, color, 
birth, learning. 

CBIME IN THIS LIGHT, OF WITHHOLDING IT. THE VOTE IS THE RIGHT AND SECU¬ 
RITY CF EDUCATION. 

5. The vote is the right of progress, of humanity, of acquiring knowledge. It 
is the vote that dispels ignorance, that disarms ignorance of its evil, that 
puts ignorance, as long as it lasts, on the side of loyalty ; that cuts short its 
reign, that issues the proclamation of freedom, that gives the motive 
and the power ti gain knowledge. It is the vote that secures knowledge, 
and a well meaning mind. It is the vote that has the right of ejectment 
against ignorance, and not ignorance that has the right of possession against 
the vote. It is the vote that palsies the arm of despotism, by expelling the 
ignorance which was the instrumentality of its power. The vote has been 
affirmed in the latest proclamation of democracy to be a trust conferred by 
government, not a right belonging to the people. This would result in a des¬ 
potism. It lays the bread and sure foundation for it. But the vote is not a 
trust, conferred by man, but a facultv and right of free agency from the 

3 


34 


Creator, belonging to one man as much as to another. The vote, as a natural 
and universal right, is the protection of the country against the betrayal of i s 
trusts in the hands of wicked men. Offices are trusts ; the vote is the confer¬ 
ring of them, on the part of the sovereign power, with the right of recalling 
and re conferring or changing them. Votes are the wills of the people ; 
magistrates are their choice to administer God’s own appointment of govern¬ 
ment for universal justice without respect to persons. Where the vote is uni¬ 
versal, where it is claimed and accorded as a universal right, there is lees 
danger of respect to persons than when it is possessed by privileged classes. 
As natural and universal it is less likely to be abused than as held by one 
class to the exclusion of others. 

CORRESPONDING OBLIGATIONS OF THE COVENANT BETWEEN VOTERS AND GOVERN¬ 
MENT. 

AUegiance. Representation , Suffrage.— Does the government confer repre¬ 
sentation ? Ia the right of representation a gift or trust from the government ? 
Nay, but representation creates the government, and the vote creates re¬ 
presentation, so that the right to vote is the profoundest, moat natural and 
most comprehensive and creative right of all. Does the government confer 
suffrage as a trust? Nay, but the vote confers the right of government as a 
trust. The vote creates representation as its form of trust, and then 
representation creates and endows government as the organization of the 
trust-company ; but what the vote creates, the government cannot own, or 
have any right of possession in it, except as a servant in commission, to take 
care of it. The protection of the rights of citizens is the sola object of govern¬ 
ment, which grows out of appointment by the citizens through the expres¬ 
sion of their will, by the vote. Is the right of choice a gift from the govern¬ 
ment? Is the expression of that choice a gift from the government, or a 
trust conferred ? The expression of that choice is what created and main¬ 
tains the government, as the ordmance of God for justice from person to per¬ 
son. All the political verbiage about suffrage as a trust is the darkening 
of counsel by words without knowledge. 

It is man’s right to have a government, but it is not the government’s right 
to have men ; that is, the government was made for man, not man for the 
government. Men are cit z;ns by virtue of the rights of man, and do not 
receive the rights of man by virtue of citizenship. Cit zenehi? is hut a local 
habitation and a name for all a man’s rights in and under government. Citi¬ 
zenship is as the band that binds these fasces in one bundle, and the govern¬ 
ment owes allegiance to them all, and cannot separate them and say, These 
we grant, hut these we withhold ; but is bound to protect them all, without 
respect to persons. Government cannot take into its own possession as 
owner any of these rights, nor by the adroit use of the words civil, politi¬ 
cal, legal, divest itself of the obligation to secure justice to every man, with¬ 
out respect to person; to every man what belongs to him as the natural 
sovereign. The vote is the expression of his sovereignty. The vote is his 
will, his legacy in trust, to the government as his executors, who are bound 
to administer the trust according to the ordinance of God. The powers that 
be are ordained of God to execute justice, to protect men in well doing. 

The voters have the right to demand of those powers that they carry out 


35 


the rules of God, liberty, justice, and if they fail to do this, then they hare 
the right to commission and put into investment of those powers new gov¬ 
ernors. The powers are ordained of God, but the officers to exercise and 
execute them are appointed by the suffrages of men, which is equally God’s 
arrangement. Tho voters appoint those who again by voting appoint and 
establish the laws for the protection of the voters in their rights of life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The votes of the whole people are 
the origin and commission of the government, whose work is that of freedom 
and justice for the people and their posterity. Hence the enormity of the 
abuse and oppression, if the government by virtue of their position give the 
force of law to wrongs. No man can possess rights which are wrongs 
against bis fellow-man. To give legality to wrongs, investing them with the 
character of rights, and enforcing them upon the people, is the greatest pos¬ 
sible enormity. Such is any legalization of a right on the part of one class 
of the people to take away the right of suffrage from any other class. 

STATE SOVEREIGNTY, AS HELD BY REBELS AND THEIR SYMPATHIZERS, A LOCAL 

TYRANNY. 

Such, by a perilous perversion of the Constitution, and infraction of the 
rights of citizenship, is the pretended right of what is called State sover¬ 
eignty, to determine and declare the status of the people, as voters or non- 
voters, and in time past, free or slave ; a vast fraud upon the people, depriv¬ 
ing them of their rights, and establishing an ownership over them. It is 
sovereignty on a foundation and with a right forbidden of God, namely, the 
right of prescribing iniquity by law, grievousness by statute. By the ordi¬ 
nance of God the government are in allegiance to God for the people ; to the 
people for their good. By the ordinance of State sovereignty, the people are 
in subjection and allegiance to the State government without the right of pro¬ 
tection by the General government. State sovereignty has produced seces¬ 
sion and rebellion and war ; and now in admitting its pretensions, especially 
in so vital an element as the power of the vote, we are providing for a new 
rebellion in behalf of the right of making serfs of the colored race, as the first 
rebellion was in behalf of the right of holding them in slavery. 

The grand use that has been made of the doctrine of State sovereignty is the 
betrayal of individual liberty. It has been the shield and support of slavery. 
State sovereignty has made slaves of United States citizens and subjects, and 
has then made a consolidated slave of the United States government to do the 
bidding of the slaveholders. The slaveholding classes have been protected by 
State sovereignty in the right of doing wrong, the right to take away from 
others their rights, the right of public and private immorality and fraud. The 
only thing accomplished by State sovereignty, which the national sovereignty 
could not have accomplished, has been, first of all, slavery ; second, all the 
wrongs of slavery established as reserved rights 

DESPOTISM OP THE ASSUMPTION OP THE RIGHT TO DISFRANCHISE. 

If the right to vote is not a natural right possessed by the people, where 
did it come from ? Who created it, who gave it, who appointed the qualifica¬ 
tions for it? if the government did this, when, and where, and by what au¬ 
thority? If the government did this, then the government owns the people 
instead of the people owning the government, and our republic is but a despot- 


36 


ism like all other oligarchies, only more subtle and dangerous, as concealing 
its tyranny and its power to perpetuate itself, under the forms of popular 
liberty. No despotism is more eternal than that which imposes on its victims 
the delusion of being their own masters, while on the contrary the despotism 
perpetuates its own mastership by holding the voting qualifications and 
machinery in its own power, and the right of disqualification at its own 
pleasure. The most artful, dangerous and powerful means of subduing and 
enslaving a people is the assumption and exercise by the government of the 
right of disqualifying classes under pretence of determining the qualifications 
of individuals for the vote, and so of withholding it by governmental arrange¬ 
ments from classes or individuals at its pleasure. 

HOW THE STATE IS MADE THE DESPOT. 

The right on the part of the government to destroy the right to vote in any portion 
of the people is the right to enslave.— The exercise of such a power is their en¬ 
slavement. The State that is permitted to take this power from the Genera^ 
government and from the people, and to exercise it, becomes superior, by that 
right and power, both to the General government and the people. The State 
that can say to any class of its citizens, You shall not be represented in the 
General government, is sovereign over that government; it can at any time 
withdraw any portion of its citizens from their citizenship and allegiance under 
the General government, and confine both to itself. It can say at any time 
of any obnoxious class of free persons, who grasp at the reality of freedom and 
are not satisfied with its shadow, You shall not be represented in nor pro¬ 
tected by the General government, and therefore, to this end, you are forever 
debarred from the right of representation in the State Legislature. 

This is the consequence of construing the right to protect and regulate 
a natural right, as being or conferring the right to destroy it. The right to 
destroy the right to vote has never been conferred by the people upon the 
government, nor ever conveyed to any State by the Constitution. Such a con¬ 
veyance would have been suicidal. To do it against themselves would be 
self-murder, to do it against others would be assassination. To do it against a 
particular cli83 would be to give the other class the supreme ownership over 
the defrauded portion with the power to constitute the State a corpora¬ 
tion, a legalized monopoly, vesting such ownership in as select and perpetu¬ 
ated a commission of irresponsible masters as they choose. It would be the 
re-enthronement of slavery as the basis of the State. 

THE WITHHOLDING OF THE VOTE A PUBLIC ROBBEBY. 

If the vote be a right of citizenship, we owe it to all our fellow-citizens, and 
can no more rightfully take it from them than we could take houses, lands, 
property. It is as direct a robbery if you take it from them by law as it 
would be it you marched an army of invasion and destroyed their home¬ 
steads. Representation is as sacred a right as property. It is far more natu¬ 
ral ; for men are not born with property, but they are born with the right 
to vote, which is neither more nor less than the right of free will, free 
agency, the right to express their preference, their choice, under a govern¬ 
ment that sets forth as its fundamental principle and law that it is a gov¬ 
ernment of the will of the whole people, expreesel by vote. You have, 
therefore, no more right to take away the right to vote than you have to 


take away the right to property. You have the right to regulate and guard 
both rights, for this is one grand object for which the people have made you 
their government, to protect their rights, to do for them by law and consoli¬ 
dated power, what they would otherwise have to protect and secure for 
themselves by individual strength and conflict as wild beasts or savages. 
Because the people have appointed you to make laws concerning property, 
did they therefore give you the right to take away their property ? Because 
they have appointed you with the right to regulate the right to vote, did they 
therefore give to you the right to take away the right to vote at your plea¬ 
sure, or to distribute it among yourselves, for a class in power ? 

The vote is the most valuable of all properties. It is the protection of your 
neighbor’s rights as well as your own placed in your own power. It is obvi¬ 
ous that if every man voted for other’s rights, as well as his own, there 
could be no governmental oppression. If there be, the voice of thy brother’s 
blood crieth against thee. The vote is a natural right, but government is 
not. When there were only two men in the world, each had the natural right 
of the vote, but neither had any natural right to govern. When there were 
three men, each bad the natural right to vote, but neither any natural right 
to govern. If one governed, it must be by consent of the vote of the others. 
There must be a government in human society, but the method, and the ap¬ 
pointment of the governor, the Executive, in behalf of the natural rights of 
all, must be by the natural right of the vote in each, but all subject to the 
one sole rule and object of government as ordained of God,—justice for all, 
protection for all. 

The wife and the child are in the husband and the father. When it is 
objected to the natural right of suffrage that all have not the vote, since 
women and children have it not, the answer is (without denying but contra¬ 
riwise maintaining the right of women as of men), They do have it in the vote 
of the husband and father of the family. The right of the vote is theirs, 
just as much as the right of a home is theirs as truly as it is the father’s, but 
the title and protection of the home vest in the father for the household, 
or in the father considered as one, for the protection of the children and 
of the whole family. But if the natural right is taken from the father, all 
lose it. 

There i 3 no protection for the domestic relation if there is none for the 
vote, as the natural right of all. If it can be taken away from a class, the 
domestic relations of that whole class may be destroyed by the voting 
classes, and by the State under their control; and if that be adopted as the 
rule of government, there can be no remedy, nor any earthly appeal. The 
non-voting classes and their children may be proscribed as a caste forbidden 
to mingle with the voting classes, forbidden to ride in the same vehicles, for¬ 
bidden to intermarry, forbidden to pursue the same trades, forbidden the ex¬ 
ercise of any respectable and lucrative profession, forbidden the possession 
of laoded property, forbidden a place in the same schools, in the same 
churches, forbidden to witness against crimes and outrages committed by 
the voting class, forbidden to sit on jury trials, except as criminals, for¬ 
bidden every occupation but that of manual labor, as mudsills, forbidden to 
choose their own masters, forbidden to stipulate their own wages, sold out for 
service as paupers to the highest bidders; all this and more, in undisputed 


38 


consonance with the letter of the amended Constitution forbidding slavery ; all 
this in consonance with what is called a free constitution, if the persons thus 
treated are excluded by the same constitution from the right to vote. There 
is no protection fjr them ; no constitution could be framed to make such pro¬ 
tection possible, so long as it took away from them the right to vote, or per¬ 
mitted it to be taken from them by the laws of a State under dominion of 
the voting classes. You have only to add the designation of color, and you 
concentrate all these disabilities and oppressions into one, for the greater con¬ 
venience and more potent application of the oppressor at his jleasure; just 
as the whole power of a vast compound machinery is put at the disposal of 
one man, when you put into his hand the hande of the lever that sets the 
whole in motion. The desigration of color for deprival of the vote is the 
talisman of oppression, before which every right is broken, as condemned 
iron is cut in fragments by the shears in a foundry to be recast into chains or 
hoopskirtB, or chords for musical instruments, or whatever the owner pleases, 
for his own profit. There is no limit to such a power but death. 


IV 


WHO ARE THE PEOPLE? 


THE DISFBANCHISEMENT OF CLASSES A DESPOTISM FOB BIDDEN BY THE CONSTITUTION.. 

The power of determining who are the people, and of excommunicating 
certain ostracised classes of citizens as not being the people intended in the 
constitution is equally a deadly despotism. When the constitution declares 
that “ We the people of the United States, in order to secure the bless 
ings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish 
this Constitution,” then for a class or a State to be able to say that a portion 
of the citzans are not the people is as deadly a despotism as the right of 
making them slaves. 

Wh*n the Constitution adds in its first article that the House of Represent¬ 
atives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the peo¬ 
ple of the several States, then for a State to assume and be permitted to 
exercise the right of banning and ostracising a portion of the people by the 
color of the skin as not being the people, and therefore not voters according 
to the Constitution, that assumption is as deadly a despotism as tbe right of 
enslaving them. And any C- ngress that sanctions such an assumption, and 
above all, proposes to amend the Constitution in order to confirm it, is an 
enslaving Congress. 

The Constitution, therefore, provides that the national representatives shall 
be chosen by the people of the several States, who shall exercise the right of 
suffrage in voling for United States representatives on the same conditions and 
with the same qualifications required iu voting for their State representa¬ 
tives. 

By whom, then, shall these conditions be settled? By the people them¬ 
selves, for this is the characteristic and proof of their existence as a free peo¬ 
ple, since the power that can impose the conditions of the vote is the master 
and owner; and a people giving over this power into other hands en¬ 
slave themselves. The power to prescribe the conditions of voting is a despotic 
power over the people to govern them through the instrumentality of as few 
agents as the prescribing power chooses to employ. But how much more if 
the prescribing power can determine who are and who are not the people, 
by the color, for example, of the skin! If the prescribing power appoints ten 
voters out of a hundred people, it owns those voters, and through them 
owns the people. But how much more, if the prescribing power appoints 
the people, and can say at pleasure what classes shall not be counted as the 
people, for example, by color of the skin. 

A deluded nation may call this a republic, because it is carried on by vot- 



40 


ing ; but it ia none the lees a despotism, ruling the people by a power not 
originating with themselves and beyond their control. But if the people 
themselves prescribe the conditions of the vote, and of citizenship, they alt-o 
can change them, and are their own masters, with the power of government 
in their own hands. 

OPINIONS OP MADISON, HAMILTON, AND OUR REVOLUTIONABT FATHERS. 

When Madison and Hamilton affirmed the rights of citizenship and repre¬ 
sentation to belong to negroes as to whites, the right of qualifying electors 
was to be a right exercised in regard to both these classes alike. SuUth 
Carolina had been forbidden from disfranchising the blacks, though the at¬ 
tempt was made to do it. Whatever qualifications were required of the one 
class the same and none different or additional thereto should he required of the 
other class. Qualifications excluding either class would be the destruction of 
the right, not the selection of individuals to exercise it, according to qualifi¬ 
cations lor it. Qualifications for it were the authority of the people of the 
State to appoint, not disqualified ins excluding the people from it. 

No State should have the power of excluding any portion of the people, 
being citizens of the United States, from the power of choosing thpir own 
representatives by vote. The particular qualifications for the exercise of 
that power and right should be for all clashes alike, and no disqualifications 
should ever be imposed, or disabilities created on account of race or color. 
The qualifications should be such as to be in the power of all citizens to 
acquire on coming to majority, so that no class of citizens under allegiance 
to the United States government should ever be without representation in 
the United States House of Representatives. No State should have the power 
of excluding any class of its inhabitants from being counted among the people 
by color or race. South Carolina attempted such exclusion twice, and each 
time was refused the privilege of disfranchising by color of the skin. Our 
fathers would not admit such a dtspotism undtr the Constitution, and thought 
they had rendered it impossible. The Committee of Fifteen propoie to make 
it not only possible, but constitutional, by amending the Constitution itself ftr 
that purpose. 

The attempts of South Carolina were made and repelled before the Consti¬ 
tution was passed. The Federalist was written after the defeat of those 
attempts, and interprets the Constitution as forbilding the Sta es from with¬ 
holding or destroying the rights of any class or description of citizens. 

It is affirmed in the fifty-sixth number of the Federalist that “ every cir¬ 
cumstance regarding the Constitution of the House of Representatives is 
strictly conformable to the principles of republican government and scru¬ 
pulously impartial to the rights and pretensions of every class and descrip¬ 
tion of citiz ns.” 

*• Who are to be the electors of the Federal Representatives? Not the rich, 
more than the poor ; not the learned, more than the ignorant; not the 
haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscu¬ 
rity and UDpropitious lortune. The electors are to be the great body of the 
people of the United States. They are to be the same who exercise the 
right in every State of electing the correspondent branch of the Legisla¬ 
ture of the State.” That is, they are to be the people, of all classes. 


41 


In accordance with these fundamental and acknowledged principles, the 
right of suffrage being no more questionable for any class of the people, than 
the right to breathe, or to walk the public streets, it was declared by the 
great writers of the Federalist, and whether the affirmation came from 
Madison or Hamilton is of little consequence, for it was the conviction of both, 
that whenever the laws of government should restore the rights which 
had been taken away from the negroes by transforming them into sub¬ 
jects of property, whenever the government performed the true function 
of government in restoring them to freedom “ the negroes could no longer 

BE REFUSED AN EQUAL SHARE OF REPRESENTATION WITH THE OTHER INHABITANTS.” 

By amendment of the Constitution and by United States law the grand 
measure of emancipation contemplated by these patriots has been consum¬ 
mated, and by their interpretation of the Constitution, representation follows, 
which is the right of suffrage, equal with the other inhabitants. 

But now, for bringing the rebel States back into power over the blacks 
to disinherit and disfranchise them at pleasure, because of the color of their 
skin, the Congress and Committee of Fifteen propose again to amend the Con¬ 
stitution so as to give to the States that power of disfranchisement which 
Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and the framers of the Constitution, and 
our fathers who adopted it, supposed they bad rendered forever impossible ! 

PRESENT OBLIGATION OF THE GOVERNMENT AND CORRESPONDING JURISDICTION. 

The government hae, by national prerogative and power, made those who 
were once tlives a free people, and is bound to defend them as such, and to 
confirm and secure their freedom beyond the reach of anv aggression against 
it, or nullification of it by the State*. No State can disfranchise a citizen of the 
United States. The right to do so would be the right to enclave him. But 
especially those whom the government bas made free, in spite of the laws of 
slave States enslaving them, and the rebellion of those States to maintain pos¬ 
session of them, are under the sole and entire legislation of the government, 
as it pleases, for their protection. If they were even slaves, they would be 
the property of the government, by right of war, and it would have the right 
to dispose of them as it might please, regardless of any claim of ownership or 
legislation over them by the rebel States. How much more as free citizens, 
whom the government has made free, whom it released by proclamation, by 
war, and by enactment, from the dominion of their oppressors, and received 
and claimed as loyal subjects and citizens, and in part enlisted as soldiers. 
Beyond question it possesses the entire and sole right of jurisdiction, and 
connected with tbat right, the covenant and obligation to protect and defend. 
Even if there were a question of jurisdiction over the whites, as rebels, 
there could be none over the blacks as loyal and free subjects and citizens. 
The government not ODly has the right but is bound to legislate for and 
over them, by virtue of the Constitution, and as entitled to its protection, 
against the rebel State, and the slaveholding State Constitution, until that Con¬ 
stitution itself shall be so framed, and the State laws accordingly, as to pro¬ 
tect the colored loyal citizens in all the rights in which the Uoited States 
Constitution protects both them and the loyal white citizens, without respect 
to color. The government has the right to disfranchise white citizms for 
treason ; but it cannot disfranchise loyal citizens, on account of color. And 
if white traitors, assuming the sole command of the State, undertake to dia- 


Iranchise the colored loyal citizens, the first duty of the government is to 
forbid and prevent such disfranchisement, and to cover such loyal citizens 
with the protection ot the Constitution. 

THE CASE TRIED UPON THE IRISH AND GERMANS 

Suppose that one half the number of inhabitants against whom the cru¬ 
elty of these inflictions of wrong and robberies of right are being enforced by 
the President in conjunction with the rebel States, presented themselves for 
citizenship from Ireland and Germany ; say only two millions ; and that the 
President propoied and the government adopted in regard to them as the 
mode of their cit zenship that neither they nor their posterity should vote# 
nor should sit on juries, nor be permitted to bear arms, nor to defend them¬ 
selves from injury, nor to ride in cars, nor to engage in particular trades, nor 
to choose their own masters, nor to determine their own wages, nor to hold 
free public meetings, nor to be seen ia the streets after eight or nine o’clock 
in the evening, and that, on conviction of crime against State laws in any of 
these or other respects, they might be sold into slavery. Would this be 
endured ? If it were even regarded as possible, who would migrate into 
such a country, even from the most oppressive States of Europe ? Who 
would not despise and abhor such republicanism as worse than any despotism 
in the old world ? 

Merely to be deprived of the vote is a degradation. It is a robbery that 
no convention, no legislature, nor State, can rightfully commit. All acts of 
State or legislature committing it must be judged null and void; whether 
New York or Connecticut or Wisconsin or any Southern State has bten guilty 
of an aggression in this respect, it cannot but be pronounced unconstitutional 
and illegal, when brought before the Supreme tribunal of justice. The ques¬ 
tion only needs to be tested in the courts, aod but one decision is possible. 
There is no constitutional or righteous power of disfranchisement except for 
crime, and then only by due process of law. 

TRIAL BY JURY NECESSARY FOR DISFRANCHISEMENT. 

The fiat of a Convention is not due process of law ; an act of the legisla¬ 
ture is not due process of law ; a proclamation by the Executive is not due 
process of law. Not a siDgle right of the citizen, nor article of any man’s pro¬ 
perty, nor any franchise belonging to him. can be taken from him by any 
such method, but only on trial and conviction of crime and sentence for 
the same. Now if color is a crime, it must be tried as such, and conviction 
must be had. and sentence pronounced be fore the penalty execu ed. There 
must be a trial in every separate case, before you can rightfully adjudge any 
man guilty of the crime of color and proceed to execute the penalty. A 
general charge or indictment against classes is not sufficient. You cannot 
proceed thus in the case of any crime whatever. You cannot indict and try 
and sentence a community, or the inhabitants of a township, for burglary or 
murder, or treason, or any other crime. You must proceed with particular 
instances. And just so, if there is a penalty upon color, you must indict and 
try every individual, and prove the accusation, or you cannot issue sentence 
or execute the penalty, if the color of a man’s skin is to shut him out from 
voting, and in consequence from every protection of the law, he has the right 
to be publicly iried by jury before this outrage can be inflicted on him. The 


43 


t<uth is, we have not begun to realiza the wickedness of this condemna¬ 
tion and injury of men by classes, nor in how many ways it contravenes and 
destroys every notion of a just government, and the object of the Almighty 
in the establishment of government. 

ENFORCED DEMORALIZATION BT DEPBIVAL OF THE VOTE. 

The deprival of the vote would keep down even a white community in 
a most injurious, calamitous, despised and degraded condition. Our fathers 
called it slavery, and resisted it to the death. But to be deprived of the 
vote because of the color of ihe skin is to declare that under no circum¬ 
stances can you be considerd a free citizen, no matter what may be your edu¬ 
cation or your worth. It is to declare that there is a stigma and abhorred 
quality in the color of your skin which there is not even in crime, and which 
no worth, nor well-doing, nor learning, nor accomplishments can counter¬ 
balance ; that individually, personally, essentially, and in the race, in a man’s 
self and in his children, there is that quality so detestable, so obnoxious, that 
what ignorance andcrine together cannot do to degrade or disqualify the 
white man, this quality of color alone shall accomplish in the colored race 
making them the objects of a social ban and curse, the mere outcasts of society, 
lepers by complexion, though the perfection of health be in the skin, shut ou, 
from respect, companionship and sympathy as criminals, while moral lepers 
walk up and down unscathed. 

THE CRIME AGAINST GOD. 

The leprosy inflicted upon Miriam, when she had presumed to speak against 
Moses because he had married an Ethiopian woman would seem to have been 
directly with reference to this prejudice The nature of the punishment is 
otherwise almost unaccountable ; and so considered, it is an early and most 
instinctive warning as to the displeasure with which God regaras the »lic¬ 
ence and indulgence of such a scorn of any of his creatures on account of the 
color of the skin. The resistance and abatement of sue i prejudice, the rebuke 
and non-permission of it, is set down in Isaiah, along with the sweeping out 
of slavery, as the condition cf God’s mercy to the nation ; if thou take away 
from the midst of thee the yoke, and the putting forth of the finger for 
insult and scorn. And there never was a more comprehensive and gracious 
opportunity and method offered by divine Providence for rebuking and abat. 
ing this prejudice, for striking at it $ foundation, raising the race above it and 
out of its reach, in obedience to the precept to Honor all men, than this oppor. 
tunity to proclaim to them and to the whole world that we hold them as citi¬ 
zens before the law in every respect < qual with ourselves, possessors cf ihe 
same rights, and to be treated accordingly. It is the only beginning if the 
recompense we are bound to make them for the countless injuries that have 
been heaptd upon them. It is the necessary foundation of any possibility of 
recompense. We cannot begin to fulfil the obligations either of justice or 
generosity or of the lowest degree of gratitude to them or to GoJ,in any 
other way. We are surely bound to impart to them the privileges of a free 
coumry, wh'ch God has preserved to us through their instrumentality. 
How empty the boast, how monstrous the hypocrisy, < f interfering with what 
we call the Monroe doctrine in behalf of our neighbors of another land, that 


44 


they shall be secured in a republican form of government, while we deny its 
benefits and its rights to millions of our own citizens. We forbid a repub¬ 
lican government in the United States, but insist that none other shall be 
set up in Mexico. Meantime, there are not so many millions of inhabitants 
in all Mexico as we propose to deprive of the common right of republican 
citizens in the United States. 

A KELIGIOUS QUESTION. 

.The question is of such a nature, so religiously fundamental, respecting the 
treatment of five millions of citizens, for ages to come, that the church cannot 
avoid its responsibility. The number involved and iocreas-ing constitutes a 
respectable nation. It is more than the whole population of this country at 
the time when we became a people. The proposition now before us is to 
deprive more mil ions of American citizens of the right of representation 
than the whole inhabitants of the Colonies who engaged in the revolution¬ 
ary war a amst Great Britain because they were deprived of the same. They 
regarded that wi hholding of their rights as an intolerable tyranny, a species 
of s’avery to be resisted by war. We propose to consign five millions of our 
fellow-citizens under this government to the same slavery, on the ground 
of vhe color of their skin. The question whether this shall be done is the 
great dividing question in the politics of our country. It is ihe question 
whether we shall obey God or man ; whether justice or a tyrannical expe¬ 
diency shall be the rule of government ; whether this government shall be 
truly republican or despotic; whether it shall bs a government making all 
classes equsl before the law, and legislating for all without respect to persons, 
or a white man’s government, excluding from the right cf suffrage all who wa 
find guil y of a skin not cohmd like our own. It is a conflict between 
Chiistian obligation on one side demanding justice and equal rights for all 
without respect to color, and infidel democracy and aristocratic exclusive¬ 
ness on the other side demanding that black men shall not be counted 
among the people, and that none but whites shall be re* resented in the gov¬ 
ernment, or permitted to have any voice or will in regard to the laws by which 
they are governed. This is a fair statement of the case. The radicalism 
of this country demand-* justice as the foundation and the rule of govern¬ 
ment; the democracy of this country demands cts e, and the ruling caste 
mean to perpetuate their oligarchy by the law that noLe butwhi.es shall vote. 

TREATMENT OF THE NEGRO THE TEST BOTH OF OUR REPUBLICANISM AND PIETY. 

The t*st of true republicanism is this, and of a republican form of gov¬ 
ernment, that it be able to hold in solution the negro and his rights so 
transp ren lv and perfec ly that no difference can be perceived betw^n him 
and the wbi e man. Whatever fa Is by thio test is an impos tion. The negro 
is ou** plumb-Lne of reconstruction. The n°gro has been God s instrument 
in subdu ng the resell on. The negro determines the qual ty of our justice ; 
God judges our justice as it affects him. The negro is the test of our own 
freedom ; it is our slavery if it cannot protect his right**. The negro is the 
a«sayer-general of our national coin ; it is base spelter if it is not virgin gold 
for him. We are the first nation that ever yet has been so tried, and it is 


45 


one of tbe proofs and consequences of tbe coming of Him who is like a re¬ 
finer’s fire, and who sits as a refiner and purifier of silver, and a swi t witness 
agairst those who turn aside the stranger from his right. At his coming the 
oppressor is to be broken in piece*, and the children of the needy are to be 
saved. The republicanism that cannot stand this te?t will be wc rthy of a 
swif er judgment, and will doubtless meet it, than all the forms ( f despotism 
that have hereto'ore had their day of trial and destruc ion. Tbe laboratory 
of God’s experiments preparatory for the coming of his kingdom is near 
tbe hour t f being shut up. The Great Bell of Time in 1866 tolls out the old 
tolls in the new. The religion that cannot stand the test of justice must go 
down. The religion that sanctions injustice on the grou d of expediency is 
accursed, and the sooner it is swept from the world, ihe better, and in this 
coming of the Lord to break such horrid shams in pieces, all good and true 
men will rejoice, and will say, The sooner the mi re gLrious. 

If ever there was a question that needed to be examined from the stand¬ 
point of religion, it is this. For in the fi st {jlace it concerns the first princi¬ 
ples of our duty to our fellow beings as a nation and as individuals. It is a 
question of justice. It is a question of benevolence. It is concerning mil¬ 
lions. It is a question for posterity, as to the laws for futare ages. It is 
a question of present and fiture welfare, industrial, soc : al, civil, educational, 
religious. It is a question for the church no less than the State. These mil¬ 
lions cannot be elevated religioudy under a law passed by religi us p ople that 
takes away their rights politic illy, takes awav all their means of self- 
defence, fjib dding the use of natural means in a state of nature belonging 
to all, depriving them of moral means, and rendering resistance on their part 
madness aod suicide. A religion that does all this, cannot prevent the work, 
ing of its own poison by the ministration of dogmas or missionary and freed- 
men’s schools. No more than the old Jews could balnace snd coun’eract- 
the working and efLct of their idolatrous compliances and forms of oppression, 
by obliiions a^d player.*, or wipe out their debt of j istioe towards man by 
a per contra of professions towards God, or canc 1 their obligations of mercy 
by the offer of sacrifice. It was bu' a forgery to cover and protect a robbery. 
So it is with a religion that first rots our fallow creatures of their rights, and 
then pretends to make it up by Bibles and schools and teachers. 

The rebels seceded and rebelled f;r slavery ; we proposed to have amended 
the Constitution in favor of slavery. They secede anew for caste ; we propose 
to amend in favor of caste, puuiog into the Constitution the Dred Scot- 
decision, that black men have no rights that white men are bound to respect 

It is the Dred Scott decision adopted as the law of the nation. The preju- 
dice against the colored race in all other directions, all other modes of ex¬ 
pression, was but local, however iniquitous; nowit is national. Befcre ic 
was dissent; now it is the established religion. Whatever there was of obli¬ 
gation towards the colored race, that obligation culminated in the duty of 
national proteciion ; it is performed in a national desertion of them and deliv¬ 
erance into the power of their enemies. There we stand, in that national 
attitude before God and man. Having had the opportunity given us of Gcd 
to put an end to this iniquity, and establish justice and mercy in its place, 
we deliberately put an end to justice and mercy and establish injustice in its 


46 


place. Id whatever way we view this, it is now the act of the nation as it 
never has been before. The outrage being against the clearest principles of 
governmental justice and obligation, is ast>lid brutish defiance *of Almighty 
God in our national capacity and character. There never was a more signal 
national failure and degradation upon earth in the acknowledged demonstrated 
incapacity of a country to fill the sphere to which the Providence of God had 
raised it. 

































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